


Gay Science

by belana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-04-04 02:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14010390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belana/pseuds/belana
Summary: A thousand years later the Citadel still welcomes students. Petroleum princesses, ex-soldiers, Northern cops and Dothraki mathematicians forge their chains of sciences here — and fall in love.





	1. Arya

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Веселая наука](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16008200) by [zmeischa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zmeischa/pseuds/zmeischa). 



> Some characters are a bit aged up so they could study in a university.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position.”

Arya yawned. The flight from Hornwood to Oldtown lasted over eight hours. During that period she had eaten two times, watched a boring movie, read four chapters of _History of Economic Thought_ and went to the bathroom three times. The only thing she didn’t manage to do was to get some sleep. It was a stupid idea to sign up to a hike through Wolfswood right before the departure — after a week in the open a plane seemed to be even more cramped than usual. And there were too many people there.

 _I don’t have claustrophobia,_ she reminded herself. _Or aerophobia. Or that thing, SAD, too. I’m not afraid of anything — well, apart from wetting my pants during passport control. Why, why did I drink that third bottle of water?_

Fortunately, the old gods and the new were merciful: she found a bathroom before she embarrassed herself in front of customs officer, her backpack didn’t end up in Dorne, airport security didn’t suspect her of trying to blow up the airport, and Arya managed to convince herself for a little while that it had been a good idea to fly to Oldtown. And then she saw Sansa.

Sansa was standing by a newspaper stall — 5’7” of elegant sophistication: auburn hair, blue eyes, neat grey shirt with the Citadel coat of arms stitched onto a breast pocket, plain chequered skirt, endless legs and a finishing touch — a copper chain with three golden stars, meaning that she had graduated with honors for three years straight.

When Arya was choosing between Oldtown and the Northern University, Mom voted for the Citadel because Sansa was there. Arya quite rudely remarked that it was the main advantage of the Northern University, but Mom somehow managed to convince her that Sansa had grown up, grown smarter and won’t behave the way she used to do at school. During those three seconds when Sansa was turning her head to face her, Arya realized nothing changed since school: all girls would copy Sansa in everything; one of them would call Arya horseface and Sansa would laugh and then say, _Don’t say that_ but she’d laugh first; it would turn out that only kill-joys were any good at maths, physics and chemistry; a boy would talk with Arya at length about soccer and casually ask about Sansa’s plans for the evening. Everything would be just like it was at school because nothing ever changed around Sansa. She should have chosen the Northern University.

“Arya! You’ve grown so much!” Arya was still a foot shorter than her. “Come, hug me! Ewww, you smell of ready-to-eat food! It that really all of your things?”

“Almost,” Arya grumbled. “My canoe, bow and bike will arrive a week later in an express train.”

“A canoe, a bow and a bike,” Sansa repeated. “Some things never change. This backpack is impossible, I’ll buy you decent suitcases and a dressing case. I won’t take no for an answer, I’m friends with Margaery Tyrell, she has huge discounts in all their boutiques, and you are my sister, for goodness’ sake. Let’s see what’s in here, shall we? Ah, a new collection, I want… Just for a minute, I promise!”

Arya glanced once at an elegant jewelry store, then composed a fifteen-minute long report on earned value, working conditions on silver mines and manufacturing in third-world countries and recited it to herself while Sansa was enthusiastically choosing between two identical silver charms.

“And pack this separately, please,” she said an eternity later. “Let’s go, Arya. This is for you, to remind you of home.”

She was holding a long black string with a silver charm shaped like a direwolf’s head.

 _You left home three years ago, I left yesterday, and you give me a trinket that you bought in my presence at the airport to remind me of home?_ Arya thought, but aloud she only thanked her. There were two ways of dealing with Sansa: strangle her at once or tolerate her.

Aeroexpress was departing from the airport building, and it seemed to Arya that she’d be spending the next five years walking from one sterile air-conditioned space to another. They finally exited the railway station, though, and Oldtown came crashing down on Arya.

The towers of the Citadel were surging into the sky right in front of her — like in the promotional brochures — the New Building was gleaming like white marble.  The waters of Honeywine were shimmering so brightly it hurt her eyes; a wide ferry lazily slid downstream surrounded by motor boats and jet boats; an unbelievably huge ocean liner was sailing in from Whispering Sound. Trams and bike bells were ringing deafeningly, tradesfolk were loudly inviting customers to their shops and stalls, the air smelt of fresh bread, grilled fish and rose-oil. Huge cruel sun shone from above.

“I’ll buy you sunglasses,” Sansa said. “And a deodorant.”

“And a new sister,” Arya snapped. “How do people study in this heat?”

“The Citadel has a comfortable microclimate, and it’s even a little chilly in the library.”

“I’ll live there then,” Arya announced decidedly, picked up her backpack and started for the bridge.

She’d been south of the Neck only once in her life, and now it seemed that she has arrived on a different planet. Cities appeared in the North only two hundred years ago, Oldtown seemed unbelievably ancient compared to Hornwood, Borrowton and Moat Cailin. It resembled the city center of White Harbor a little, but even there one could see glass towers of banks and insurance companies on Seal Rock from narrow streets of the harbor. Oldtown was hammered down to the ground, only the Citadel and the old white lighthouse down by the harbor rose above flat roofs of old houses.

The closer they came to the river the stronger the smell of food became. Arya wiped her mouth discreetly a couple of times, it felt like she was drooling like a hungry dog.

“We can eat on the bridge,” Sansa said graciously. “There are some decent fish restaurants there. They don’t compare with _White Tower_ , but they have a dress-code there, you wouldn’t be able to enter in this.”

Arya was quite aware of plastic tables near the bridge where happy people ate fish with their hands, but decided not to push it — Sansa could faint just from the offer itself. The restaurant on the bridge was expensive, of course, but the food was delicious, the helpings were huge; the view of the harbor was breathtaking. Fishermen were standing on the roof so from time to time a fluttering silvery fish on hooks flew by them.

Sansa lent out a room on campus for her beforehand, and for a moment Arya felt like an ungrateful pig. Then she opened the door and saw the room itself. Sansa had inherited Mom’s talent for creating elegant and cozy atmosphere where Arya felt like a clumsy dirty-faced red-neck.

“Thank you,” she said through her teeth.

“Don’t mention it. Your schedule is on the table. Tomorrow you have linear algebra at 8.30, don’t be late!”

“I won’t,” Arya muttered, fell face down on the bed and went out like a light.

She managed not to be late only because, as it turned out, meticulous Sansa put a winded-up alarm-clock on her bedside-table. Arya threw a pillow at the source of that disgusting sound without opening her eyes; then jumped up, tried to pluck the alarm-clock from under the bedside-table where it was still ringing; scattered all her thing around, looking for a toothbrush, found it in the usual backpack pocket; and finally ran up to the classroom fifteen minutes before the class — disheveled, hungry and dressed in a khaki t-shirt instead of grey shirt.

It turned out the last bit was not important, only three students were wearing grey shirts, the rest were dressed casually. One tall blue-eyed boy was wearing a t-shirt just like Arya’s.

“Are you on a military scholarship too?” he asked after the class.

Arya felt a strong desire to lie. Yes, she had spent three years in the Bay, yes, she had earned the Imperial scholarship to the Citadel, yes, she was a soldier.

“No, I’m here right after school. What do you have now?”

“Economy. You?”

“Me too. I’m Arya.”

“I’m Gendry.”

After the Economy class Gendry approached her again.

“Are you from the North?”

“Yep.”

“Cool.”

“What about you?”

“I’m a big-city boy. What do you have now?”

“Engineering drawing.”

“Awesome, me too!”

There was a break after engineering drawing. Gendry suggested to go out for a bite, Arya agreed with all her heart (she had no idea where the dining hall was).

“I want to become aircraft engineer,” Gendry said on the way. “And you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Alright.”

“It’s the truth. I spent three years preparing for Crakehall and then failed the exams. I will probably become an engineer, but not in petroleum development.”

Gendry froze.

“Seriously? You, shorty, wanted to get into the military academy?”

Arya punched him hard on the shoulder.

“I’m not shorty! For your information, I’m the archery champion of the North in the junior league, and last year I won the Wolfswood marathon!”

“Did you? Why you failed the exams then?”

“Because I’m an inch shorter than is allowed by their stupid rules!”

“That’s it, the Imperial Army will not survive such loss! Hey, stop fighting, it was a joke! I said I was joking!”

On the way to the dining hall they managed to fight two more times, but made up in the waiting line. Gendry started waving at someone right from the checkout, then dragged Arya to a long table occupied by boys and young men in khaki t-shirts.

“Guys, this is Arya. This is Hot Pie, Lommy, Thoros of Myr, Senior sergeant Dondarrion, Lem, Harwyn, Pello, Anguy, Jack-Be-Lucky…”

Arya was so excited she lost her appetite. She’d never seen so many soldiers at once. Many of them wore bullets on chains around their necks — Arya knew it was a custom of those who were injured in battle. Lommy’s both hands were tattooed up to fingernails, one-eyed Senior sergeant Dondarrion looked like he was assembled back after an explosion.

Arya looked at the next table and was rendered speechless for good. Half of people there had long braids decorated with beads, buttons and bullets.

“These are the Kingsguard, the White Cloaks,” Lommy explained. “Those in grey shirts, by the window, are the bright young things, show-offs.”

Arya silently complemented herself on not wearing the grey shirt.

“And separatists are over there,” Hot Pie added.

“What?”

“Dornishmen,” Anguy explained patronizingly. “Hot Pie is a die-hard patriot, he can’t forgive that they separated from the empire two hundred years ago.”

“What?” Hot Pie flared. “Look at Arya, she’s from the North. They have their own culture, religion, language, they have their own police, they have so much mineral oil they could drink it if they chose to, and they live above the Neck. Do they separate from the Crown? No! Because Northmen are decent people unlike these freaks.”

All of them had served in one infantry brigade at one time or another, Gendry was a mechanic, Hot Pie was a cook. Thoros and Pello, the legionnaires, had earned the Imperial citizenship in the Bay, and now Thoros was confirming his Myrrish medical degree in the Citadel. Senior sergeant Dondarrion did actually trip on a mine once, but he was discharged two years later, when that burned-up bastard over there at the Kingsguard table had shattered his skull with a beer jug. Some of them had been studying for several years already and had earned enough links to make a chain, but Arya noticed that no one at this table wore them: they preferred a large pin on the shoulder with metal chain-links of different colors. Arya decided it was a cool idea.

Sansa and a dark-haired girl in a grey shirt entered the dining hall.

“Here come the Spider and the Mantis,” Lem announced.

Arya frowned. She didn’t like the way Lem spoke of Sansa: if Robb’d have heard him he would have knocked all his teeth out. She estimated Lem’s size and corrected herself — _would have tried_ — but she had to acknowledge that she was wrong again. If Robb wanted to knock someone’s teeth out, that person’s height and strength didn’t matter.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because female spiders and mantes devour their sexual partners. Just like these two. At least five people were expelled from the Citadel because of Sansa, and she still pretends to be a virgin.”

Arya quickly looked around, searching for somethings to knock his teeth out with, didn’t find anything, grabbed her tray and said, “That’s my sister, idiot.”

Judging by the sounds behind her back, Gendry did find something to hit him with, but Arya didn’t look back.


	2. Sansa

_"M'athchomaroon!”_

“It should be sharper! Now you’re, I don’t know, beckoning a cat. Anyway, stop torturing yourself, just say _M'ath_ like all normal people do.”

“But it’s a familiar greeting, and I want to learn a formal one!”

“Listen, stop fooling around, If you have an assault rifle on your shoulder no Dothraki in his right mind would care about your wording. If you don’t have a rifle they won’t care for you anyway.”

“That’s not fair!   _M'athchomaroon! Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh?_ ”

 _“Anha dothrak chek asshekh, zir naquis._ ”

Sansa frowned, puzzled.

“ _Zir naquis?_ What does that mean?”

“It means _stupid little girl_.”

Sansa sighed. She doubted that she could tolerate such attitude till the end of the year, but she had no choice: Margaery said that she wouldn’t study Dothraki language even for Sansa, the professor told them to practice speaking in pairs, and she couldn’t find another partner. No one refused her directly, but everyone else already had partners. Everyone in the Citadel knew that Sansa Stark was bad luck — apparently, everyone apart from this six-feet-tall ex-Kingsguard with burns covering half of his face.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said tentatively.

“Ask away.”

“Why do you study Dothraki if you know it already?”

“That’s precisely the reason. I have military scholarship, do you think the Crown is going to feed us for five years out of kindness of its heart? Nah, three links each year, five links of one color in five. At least I know Dothraki.”

That sounded logical, but Sansa just couldn’t let go.

“Why did you sign up for the Ancient History class in the first year?”

“I was curious. Prehistoric monsters, wars, human sacrifices…  Who knew it would be burial rituals half the time?”

“Then why did you sign up for the History of the Middle Ages during the second year?”

“I already told you, I have to earn five links of one color.”

“Then why did you sign up for the History of Religion during the third year?”

Clegane stared at Sansa as if deciding if she could be trusted, then pulled a silver seven-pointed star on a chain from under the collar of his shirt.

“I’m saved,” he explained sheepishly.

Sansa remembered the way Clegane behaved before and decided that he had indeed been saved — sometime last year. At least he had stopped coming drunk to classes between the second and the third year. The Faith of the Seven frowned upon drinking. The old gods, on the other hand, had no objections to alcoholism. That was the reason, as it had been explained to Sansa in Sociology class, the _Twelve Steps_ program didn’t do any good in the North. Prohibition was much more effective.

“My turn now,” Clegane said, smirking. “I answered your three questions, now you’ll answer mine.”

Sansa anxiously looked at the closed door. She’d already played these games and didn’t like them one bit. She could at least defend herself against Joffrey or Harry Harding, but Clegane was huge like a derrick.

“Why are you studying Dothraki yourself? Don’t you want to research the War of the Five Kings?”

“How do you know…”

“It doesn’t matter. So why do you study it?”

It was a fairly innocent question, so Sansa relaxed a bit.

“Ser Barristan Selmy is going to excavate Sarnor, and he said that he’d take ten best students with him, but only those who know Dothraki.”

“Sarnor? Is he mad? There are three tank mines per square meter there. That old fool will  blow up himself and half of your crowd as well! Why do you want it?”

Sansa shivered a little. She knew, of course, that almost fifty years ago there had been  a military operation in Sarnor, that was the reason archeologists had gained access to sites only last year, but she had never thought of tank mines.

“To make a great scientific discovery,” she said weakly.

“And he’ll only take his top ten students,” Clegane added mockingly.

Sansa was embarrassed and angry at the same time. She was taught that it was immodest to always be first, that it was immature to turn everything into a competition, that studying was for gaining knowledge, not grades. But she truly was the best student not one, but three years in a row! She did know History and all supplementary historical disciplines, as well as Valyrian, Psychology, Sociology and damned Economy (because without knowing basic economic processes one can’t understand history). If anyone deserved a trip to Sarnor it was her.

“Why do you need Dothraki anyway?”

“To communicate with locals.”

“ _Hello, how do you do?_ I can just about imagine that. Alright, remember these words, when the locals start, erm, communicating with you, shout, _Mahrazh anni mra qora neak jahak!”_

Sansa tried to repeat that, but failed.

“My who has what?”

“ _My husband’s braid reaches his butt_. Something like that.”

Sansa blinked in confusion.

“Is that... a form of address?”

“You, the honors student, are a very stupid girl. It means that your husband serves in the Kingsguard, and if they hurt you then the next day a dozen of White Cloaks would rip this village to pieces.”

The ancient city of Sarnor suddenly became even less appealing than five minutes ago.

“Maybe I should come with you,” Clegane mused. “At least I know how to hold a shovel.”

“Are you a farmer?” Sansa asked politely, trying to compose herself.

“I’m a gravedigger, _zir naquis_. Please, don’t give me that look, I don’t embalm corpses, I dig graves. Alright, that was the first question, now the second. Do you want me to go to the Vale tomorrow and punch Harry Harding in the face? He’s the bastard who made that 'spider and mantiss' joke.”

Sansa was at loss. She knew that Robb was capable of traveling through half of Westeros to punch anyone who hurt his little sister in the face, but Robb was her brother, while Clegane had been going to the same classes as her for three years straight and once, during the first year, had tried to kiss her at a party while drunk.

“It’s very sweet of you,” she mumbled.

“It’s not that far, a night on a train.”

Sansa realized with horror that he already knew the price of tickets, had found out where Harry Harding spent his time and figured out what to do there until the train back arrived. It had always seemed to her that Robb was terribly determined, but compared to Clegane Robb was just… a bit impulsive.

“No, don’t!” she said a little louder than intended.

Clegane looked her in the eye.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. If Harry Harding gets a beating because of me then everyone in the Citadel will surely believe that I am truly bad luck. Margaery and I, that is. Please, don’t. But… thanks for offering.”

“Any time. Alright, let's do the assignment. _M'athchomaroon! Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh_ _?_ ”

” _Anha dothrak chek asshekh_.”

“ _Hazi davrae_.”

They repeated greetings, introductions and even had a little philological dispute: Sansa claimed that calling her birth place _Rhaesh Andahli_ was incorrect, since the North had never been land of Andals, while Sandor replied that Dothraki didn’t care about North or South of _Rhaesh Andahli_ , _Valshe_ for them was Ibben and that Sansa would be beaten for saying stupid things.

In an hour Clegane stood up, and then Sansa remembered.

“What about the third question?”

“What?”

“You wanted to ask me three questions and asked only two.”

“The third question… Alright, tell me is this archeology of yours very boring?”

 _Oh gods,_ Sansa thought, but said, “I was fascinated, but, you know, it’s mostly about burials too.”

“Shit, why is this my life? Graves on vacation, graves on classes… See you tomorrow, _jalan atthirari anni_.”

After he left Sansa sat motionless for a while, then shook her head and reached out for a Dothraki dictionary. _Zir naquis_ meant merely _little bird, jahak_ did translate as _Dothraki warrior’s braid_ (marked as ‘obsolete meaning’), while _jalan_ meant _moon_ , which was confusing. Sansa thought that she had misheard and he had said _ajalan_ ( _tonight_ ), but _anni_ definitely meant _my_. Then she reread the article on _jalan_ , including all examples of use, put the dictionary away and said, “Oh gods.”

The next day she found Drogo, the fifth-year student. Drogo was a celebrity in the Citadel, his golden chain with four stars reached the middle of his chest (Dothraki always wore chains around their necks, not chain-links on a pin. No one dared to tell them it was not manly enough).

“Can I ask you a question?” Sansa asked shyly.

Drogo looked at her patronizingly from his height.

“Ask your question, woman.”

“If someone said _jalan atthirari anni_ to me what does it mean?”

“It means that that person can’t pronounce _th_ correctly. Or you can’t. Who said that to you, a Dothraki or a White Cloak?”

“A White Cloak,” Sansa said, a little embarrassed.

“Ah, it’s alright then, he just likes you.”

“What if it was a Dothraki?”

Drogo smirked, “Then you’re in trouble, we say such words only to our wives, and we, you know, have a custom of warning the other party before marrying. The last seventy years or so. If a White Cloak said that, it doesn’t matter, they only think they understand our ancient culture.”

“What if… What if I want to tell him that I like him too?”

Drogo shrugged.

“So do. Cat got your tongue?”

“In Dothraki.”

Drogo rolled his eyes.

“Why no one ever asks me how to say _second-degree equation_ in Dothraki? _Shekh ma shieraki anni_.”

“ _Shekh ma shieraki anni_ ,” Sansa repeated.

Drogo waved his hand angrily.

“Woman, don’t say such words to me! I can marry you after that… without warning.”

He looked at stupefied Sansa and added, unsmiling, “Kidding.”


	3. Brienne

There was a note in large crooked handwriting on the fridge: _GONE. BBS._ Brienne checked the wardrobe just in case: Jaime did take only three shirts and three briefs which meant he was going to return in three days. It didn’t really mean anything:  the last time he had left for an hour and returned three weeks later. Today he at least had enough sense to leave a note…

Brienne went over the apartment, cleaned the dishes, took a bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet and put it back. When she was sixteen her father made her swear on her life that she wouldn’t ever do three things: drive under influence, drink denaturated alcohol and get shit-faced drunk alone. Brienne could say with pride that she had kept her word. The part about denaturated alcohol proved to be the easiest.

She left the apartment and went toward the port. Students rarely visited port bars, they were more attracted to restaurants on bridges, cafes and wineries in the Guildhalls. One could get shit-faced drunk in the port without seeing a single familiar face in an hour (Brienne was weak-headed, an hour would be quite enough for her). But as ill luck would have it, Sandor Clegane was sitting in the first bar she entered — with a half-a-liter jug of _Bloody Dani._

Brienne had never served in one brigade with him, but knew everything about him: in amount of gossip per capita the Kingsguards were surpassed only by schoolgirls, leaving the magical world of cinema far behind. Clegane started out as a soldier, got promoted to sergeant and then captain with speed that didn’t make him any friends. Then during the assault of Astapor he refused to attack, cut off his braid and threw it into the fire (among the Kingsguard it equaled to cutting off his hand). He was demoted back to soldier, but for some reason not court-martialed — probably the order he had refused to follow was even more idiotic than usual. A year later he was promoted back to sergeant, but then his plane was shot down over Yunkai. His second braid was cut off already in the hospital.

All of this colorful biography didn’t make her want to drink in his company, but there was nothing she could do: Clegane pointed at the stool next to him, beckoned the bartender and asked for a bottle of _Skagos_ and another _Dani._

“You give me yours, I give you mine,” he said hoarsely. “First I’ll tell you why I’m getting drunk, and then vice versa.”

Brienne nodded reluctantly.

“You see, yesterday I was on a date.”

Military etiquette demanded an answer in form of _Poor woman! Gods, don’t ever let me get that desperate!_ , but Brienne only muttered noncommittally.

“She says, _Let’s go to White Tower, they have a good view_.”

“They’d better — for the money they ask.”

“Forget the prices, these bastards have a dress-code. And I have two t-shirts, a dirty one and a dirty one. So I took my dress uniform…”

“Where did you get it?” The Kingsguard were notorious for their lack of discipline: they grew out their hair, which was expressly forbidden by military regulations, branded government-issued weapons with their personal seals and never ever wore dress uniform, especially during parades. Everyone found their own unique way of getting rid of white uniform with golden buttons. Brienne, for example, had washed hers with black socks.

“I rented it in a sex shop. They have everything, including a dress uniform of my size. I polished my medals, all was well and proper: an injured warrior, who spilt his blood in the name of the Emperor in the Bay, with his lady friend. Who’d stop such a handsome guy?”

Brienne thought that it was a brilliant idea. Jaime always demanded that she wear a dress and high heels to _White Tower_ with him, but Brienne thought that a dress and she existed in different universes, and their meeting could cause a Big Bang. A dress uniform, though…

“Wait, how were you going to pay the bill?” she asked, bewildered.

Clegane smirked.

“I wasn’t.”

“How’s that?”

“What’s the first rule of the first date? Make a lasting impression. Any millionaire could take her to _White_ _Tower_ , that’s common, but I bet she never went from a restaurant to a police station.”

Brienne laughed.

“You should write a book _101 Advices for a Romantic Date_. It will become a best-seller.”

“You bet.”

“So, were you taken to the police station?”

Clegane sighed.

“Worse. She paid the bill.”

Brienne gulped her _Skagos_ and filled the glass again.

“Are you telling me that you went on a date with a woman who can pay for a dinner for two at _White Tower_?”

“Yep. We’re going to visit the Hightower Gallery tomorrow.”

 _She must have three arms,_ Brienne thought. _Or three legs. People like us get only those normal people who have been maimed_.

“Now it’s your turn,” Clegane said.

Brienne was definitely not drunk enough to tell her story and wasn’t sure she’d ever consume enough alcohol to discuss Jaime Lannister with Clegane.

“My man has a complicated relationship with his sister,” she said, staring at the table.

“Come on, during the previous reign such relationships resulted in a jail time, but why is it complicated now?”

Brienne was stunned.

“What?!”

“It’s no big secret, the whole Bay knows that Colonel Lannister shags his sister. Didn’t you know that?”

Of course, Brienne knew.

When she was six Jaime Lannister was just a picture from a glossy magazine. Jaime Lannister in a cadet uniform dances with his sister (a lacy evening gown on a emerald satin tank dress by _Lana Fossoway_ , shoes by _Malanon_ , earrings and necklace by _Estermort & Tarth _)  at a ball; Jaime Lannister in a pristine white number plays tennis with his sister; Jaime Lannister, one of the invincible six, wins the Royal Regatta; Jaime Lannister in dress uniform attends his sister’s wedding (wedding dress by _Lana Fossoway_ , veil of vintage Myrrish lace, emerald necklace and tiara — family heirloom). At that time the most eligible bachelors of Westeros had held as much interest to her as dresses by Lana Fossoway, in other words, zero. She had cut out and kept only the picture of the invincible six: flawlessly parallel paddles, hands and shoulders tensed in synchronised movement, Oswald Whent’s shaved head gleaming in the sun.

When she was fourteen Jaime Lannister was a poster boy of the Kingsguard. He never said that the situation at the Bay would stabilize, he rarely said anything for camera, but he would smile widely, and everyone knew right away that the Kingsguard didn’t and wouldn’t give up. Once in a while he flew back to the capital, received another medal from the Emperor’s hands and posed with his sister, dressed in another Fossoway dress. Brienne flipped past those photographs without looking — even then she instinctively avoided beautiful and well-dressed women, even if they were two-dimensional.

When she was eighteen she found out that Jaime Lannister was a bloody bastard, that he was shorter than her and that he slept with his sister. The first two facts shook her so much that the last one barely registered.

After a month in the barracks Brienne came to a conclusion that the Kingsguard conducted a large-scale jerk competition and she was one of the jury. By the time she was assigned to the Bay she had already formed a top ten and was ready to give the grand prize by kneeing the winner in the balls when suddenly Jaime Lannister burst into her chart and easily settled on the top. During their first conversation Brienne went from ‘I don’t care’ to ‘Go find a paper bag where you’d be keeping your teeth’ in five minutes flat. Usually such a journey took her at least two weeks. Jaime Lannister couldn’t pass up a first place, even if it was in a jerks pageant.

She pensively drank up her whiskey.

“What?”

“How did you manage to get involved with him?”

Brienne poured herself more _Skagos_.

“We were shot down over the desert, we had to jump, only the two of us landed in one piece. In three days I was so sick of him I grabbed him by the collar and shoved him into the sand face first a couple of times.”

Clegane stared at her with disbelieving respect.

“Did you kick Colonel Lannister’s ass back when he had both hands attached?”

Brienne smirked. She loved these sort of questions.

“For your information, I kicked the entire Rainbow platoon’s ass — one after another. You don’t get to be a Kingsguard for nothing.”

“Then what?

“Then?” Brienne sighed. “Then I raised my head and saw a dozen of armed men who were ready to make popcorn and enjoy the show.”

Clegane guffawed.

“Right, very funny. Fortunately, they were just mercenaries, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you now, but they had some scores to settle with Jaime. At first they cut off his braid, then… his hand.”

She gulped her whiskey and filled the glass again. That scene still haunted her in nightmares: lisping mercenary leader lifted and lowered a Dothraki arakh with a hissing sound, severed hand fell onto the sand, Jaime screamed. Brienne would wake up, drenched in sweat, and by the look in Jaime eyes understand that his nightmares were that same.

“Then they started flipping a coin to decide who’d rape me first, but Jaime saved me.”

“With a hand just cut off.”

“Yes. He said that my father was the owner of _Estermont & Tarth_, and I was worth more whole than spoilt.”

Clegane calmly acknowledged this information. Brienne blinked in confusion.

“Wait… Did you think it was true too?”

“What? It isn’t?”

“Are you mad? My father gives tickets for parking violations on Tarth. Do you know how peasants got their names a century ago? ‘What’s your name? Jon? Where are you from? Tarth? You’d be Jon Tarth, then. Here’s your passport. Bring in the next one.’ Half of the island’s population are Tarths, the other half are Fishers.”

“Everyone is so smart, it’s disgusting. What happened to Colonel and you after that?”

“After that their leader did try to rape me, but I bit his ear off. Then they threw me into a pit with a bear.”

“Where did they find a bear in a desert?”

“Beats me. It was a part of Dothraki moving market. You know, a dozen of heavy trucks arrive and sell everything under the sky from buttons to surface-to-air missiles. Jaime was also sold to some local businessman, but he managed to escape and jumped into the pit to me, claiming he wouldn’t get out till I was bought too. So they dragged both of us out, and then a military convoy recovered us near New Ghis.”

“And then you lived happily ever after?”

Brienne sighed.

“Then he was discharged from the army and sent back to Westeros, while I spent another three years there. ‘Happily’ lasted for some time till we were sent to take out the Rorge’s gang.”

“Let me guess. He tried to rape you too.”

Brienne touched a scar on her cheek.

“He tried to bite my nose off.”

“Well, that’s something new at least.”

“Thank you. Then I was discharged from the army, Jaime and I met again, and there’s that.”

Brienne felt as if she was retelling a grade-B movie about the conquest of Sotoros: shootings, high speed chase and a kiss against the setting sun. This story didn’t include a night in the back of a truck when she basically held Jaime in her arms so his stump wouldn’t hit the side of the truck while he explained in feverish whisper why he had to return to Cersei alive. It didn’t include letters written in pathetically crooked hand (she told everyone those were letters from her four-year-old nephew). It didn’t include Jaime who had kicked the door of her hospital room and asked, _What did you do, you, stupid cow?_ after which Brienne finally burst into tears in relief.

“Wait,” Clegane said. “Rorge’s gang. Are you that mad wench who went there alone to rescue a hostage?”

Brienne gulped another whiskey. She felt that her image was complete: a daughter of a jewelry store owner who had wiggled her way into a serious military operation, ruined everything and hid behind the back of Jaime Lannister — a man who was shagging his own sister.

“Cool.”

“What is cool about it? You said it yourself: I’m mad.”

“That’s nothing new, the Kingsguard are all dumb, but at least you got a pair.”

“Tell that to my platoon. They refused to get me out during the assault, if it were not for Dondarrion and his men I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Balls were handed out according to a list. Dondarrion’s got two sets, you’ve got one, most got none.”

Brienne started to understand how Clegane managed to become a captain once. The Kingsguard valued the ability to ignore obstacles — that is until an order from a senior officer became that obstacle. Brienne herself could break a brick wall with her head or die under the wreckage, but a real Kingsguard must walk through a wall, look around with mild interest and continue with his mission.

“Jaime got me released from active duty due to health issues and got me a military scholarship in the Citadel. We rented an apartment in Newtown, and that’s that.”

“And now he has a complicated relationship with his sister.”

Brienne felt that she couldn’t drink anymore.

“He had always had a complicated relationship with his sister. You see… First she calls him, and he starts shouting. An hour, two hours he shouts at her through the phone, recalling some men, very few of them, you see, so he just repeats the names over and over, like a broken record. The whole Newtown now knows that Cersei shagged a Kettleback. Then Jaime hangs up and explains to me for two hours what a bitch she is. The next day Tyrion or Uncle Kevan or one of the children calls, and it’s the worst because Jaime rushes to the airport, and I can’t take it anymore…”

Clegane put an empty bottle under the table.

“I think you’ve had enough.”

Brienne sobbed drunkedly.

“Look at yourself: you went through three large _Danis_ while I was here.”

“It’s tomato juice, stupid.”

“What? You’re sitting… in a bar… drinking… tomato juice… because your girlfriend paid for you in the restaurant?”

“What else can a man on the wagon do? Bartender, the bill and a taxi.”

 


	4. Sarella

Sarella Martell hated the Seven Kingdoms for so many reasons she couldn’t remember them all. For invading the Bay. For aggressive economic policy. For centuries-long oppression of Dorne. For milky-white skin of aristocrats, millionaires and celebrity actors. For archaic institute of monarchy. For bad manners of Imperial tourists. And finally for a cheating name: after a bloody separation of Dorne the Seven Kingdoms turned into Six, but Empress Barba instantly granted the Iron Isles the status of a kingdom (the Iron Isles demanded independence in return, didn’t get it and terrorized the empire for the next hundred years).

Of course, Sarella planned to get her medical degree in the Seven Kingdoms. Of course, she was going to graduate the Citadel that started accepting female students only fifty years ago — the last of all institutions of higher education in the Seven Kingdoms. Sarella — a girl, a Dornishwoman, a mulatta, a child of a polygamous family — was going to show everyone who was the real celebrity and queen.

For starters, Oldtown was not what she thought it’d be. Street photos of Barrowton or Trader Town featured people of color only if a garbage collector or a road worker accidentally were caught on camera, but all races and languages mixed in the port of Oldtown: in the Guildhalls black beauties with _Tyrell & Co, Lana Fossoway _ and _Estermont & Tarth _ branded bags dodged groups of Ibbenese tourists, Dothraki girls and boys in bright Skagosi skirts kissed on the steps of the Starry Sept, tradesfolk were speaking in fifty languages at once, and there wasn’t a single restaurant with Westerosi food at the port — thank all old gods and new! (Sarella also hated the Seven Kingdoms for its vile cuisine.)

In the Citadel, though, these colorful streams mixed only during classes. In the dining hall and after classes students painstakingly broke into homogeneous groups: aristocrats and millionaires’ kids, military scholarship holders, Dornishmen, Dothraki, sportsmen, very fat girls and very pimpled boys… Sarella stayed away from all of them: she disliked when people tried to tag her.

Two weeks after the semester began it became clear who was the new rising star of the medical school. His name was Sam Tarly.

Sam Tarly was monumentally fat, when walking he waddled and quivered like jelly gone wrong. He perspired so profusely that during each class he used one pack of tissues on wiping his face. He dressed only in black probably because sweat stains were less visible on black, but by noon his shirts clung to his back, and chairs he sat on became damp. Under the southern sun his chalky white face became bright pink like a dollhouse. He was afraid to look people in the eye, smiled sheepishly in response to any cruel jokes or pranks, he puked two times in the morgue. And this lump of stale dough bereaved Sarella of superiority in the medical school!

Father taught her that a successful war started with learning everything about the enemy, but it proved to be difficult. Apparently, Imperials could say in which Kingdom a boy was born, which school he graduated from and how much money his father earned just be hearing the way he asked to pass some bread, but for Sarella they all spoke absolutely the same way. Sam Tarly was not part of any group that gathered in the Citadel ward, not even the one consisting of boys and girls who were wearing black just like him. From time to time he shyly rolled up to them, was fended off and dismally rolled away.

Sarella decided that she could start with pretending to be a savage Dornish fool. When she and Arya rested after the morning work-out she said casually, “I wonder why Tarly always wears black. Did someone in his family die?”

“No,” Arya answered, wiping her face with a towel. “He’s part of the Nightswatch.”

“Are you saying he’s part of a gang?” Sarella was flabbergasted. Young Dornishmen often formed biker gangs, football fan gangs and neighborhood gangs. Those were gangs in name only, most of them never ventured beyond minor vandalism, but only the coolest guys could wear the gang’s colors or insignia. Sarella’s stepmother, Ellaria, travelled around  with the Hellhounds in her time and still proudly showed their tattoo on her left shoulder. But Sam Tarly, that piece of fat?!

“That’s no gang! The Nightwatch is the shield that guards the realms of men.”

 _The Encyclopaedia of the Seven Kingdoms_ informed Sarella that the Nightswatch was an organization, created in the North in the period when mammoths roamed the land. Long time ago the Nightswatch oppressed minor nations of the North and engaged in rehabilitation of murderers and rapists, but now it was police of sorts.

The idea of Sam Tarly the policeman was no less weird than the idea of Sam Tarly the biker. Sarella was still digesting that information when Sam Tarly approached her and hesitantly asked her to provide genetic sample for his research.

“What research?” Sarella snapped. “Do Dornishmen really have tails?”

“N-no, Professor Targaryen wants to study old Westerosi families because your genetic lines can be verified by archive records for thousands years back. I already persuaded two Starks and Margaery Tyrell, and I know that one woman from the law school has an affair  with Jaime Lannister, and if…”

“Professor Targaryen?” Sarella interrupted. “The Aemon Targaryen, who decoded the DNA?”

“Well… yes.”

“And you’re gathering genetic material for him, aren’t you?”

“Well… yes.”

Sarella never hated anyone as she now hated Sam Tarly.

Professor Targaryen was over a hundred years old, and the last thirty years he was blind. He was hard to find outside of his lab, but after a week Sarella accomplished her goal.

“Professor, make me your assistant,” she said, trying to steady her voice.

Aemon Targaryen looked at her with eyes, covered by a milky glaze.

“Which year are you?”

“The first.”

“No.”

“That’s not fair! Sam Tarly is also the first-year student!”

“Yes,” he agreed calmly. “That’s not fair. A first-year student should spend his days in the library, and evenings in the morgue, not work as an errand boy for a blind old man. But I got used to Sam, he gathered genetic material from villages beyond the Wall for three years for me, this weakness of an old man can be forgiven.”

“And in five years, when he’ll graduate, you’ll get him a place in the best lab, won’t you?”

“Dear child, in five years I’ll be dead.”

Sarella wanted to object, but bit her tongue. Forty years ago Professor Targaryen found out that inherited character of descendants of ancient Valyrians — peculiarly colored irises — was linked to a gene that caused glaucoma in old people and announced that he’d go blind after seventy. Ten years later this hypothesis proved to be correct. If Armon Targaryen said that he’d die in five years it was stupid to argue, he knew better.

“Anyway, if his resume says he worked with you any lab…”

“You’re Dornish, aren’t you?”

“Yes, why?”

“You’re not familiar with the laws of the Seven Kingdoms. The privileges of the soldiers in the Bay do not extend to the Nightswatch. Watchmen, who received higher education at the expense of the Crown, must then serve three years in the Nightswatch. In eight years it won’t matter that Sam once brought me coffee.”

Sarella realized that the conversation was over, sighed loudly and turned to leave. Professor Targaryen carefully took her by the elbow.

“Your name is Sarella Martell, isn’t it?”

“How do you know that?”

“Derricks in the Dornish Sea belong to your family.”

“So what?”

“And you plan to graduate from the medical school.”

Sarella jerked her elbow free.

“Maybe it’s unusual for the Seven Kingdoms, but not for Dorne.”

“Sam Tarly is not smarter than you.”

Sarella froze.

“To be sure!”

“He served three years in the Nightswatch and during that time he had a chance to use my library. He’s not smarter than you, he’s just three years older. Don’t waste your time on pleasing old professors, child, spend your time studying.”

Sarella rarely did what she was told to. She didn’t go to study. Instead she found Sam and demanded a list of books from Aemon Targaryen’s library.

Sam Tarly, the shield that guards the realms of men (the idea always made Sarella laugh), turned out to be not a Northman at all. He was born and raised in the Dornish Marches on the border with Dorne. Once the bloodiest battles for independence were fought there, since that time the Marches were peppered with border posts. Sam’s father was a commander in one of them. Sam as a descendant of a renowned military family was supposed to follow his ancestors’ footsteps, but the Crakehall Military Academy flatly refused to have him. Then Tarly Sr. demanded that his unworthy scion entered the Nightswatch and served the Crown that way at least.

“Did you obey?”

Sam shrugged instead of answering. It really was a rhetorical question: of all qualities of a soldier Sam had one — the skill to follow orders.

Unlike Crakehall the Nightswatch did not weight their recruits, did not measure their height and did not make them do fifty push-ups or chin-ups. Anyone could serve in the Nightswatch, even Sam Tarly.

If anyone told Sarella that she knew modern life in the Seven Kingdoms mostly from movies she would have been indignant. The image of the North she had in her mind (dense forests, covered in snow; a zombi or a cannibal hiding behind every tree) was probably based on serious historical works. The Nightswatch rarely appeared in those books — and mostly it  counted the bodies.

In reality only one of three brigades of the Nightswatch, rangers, did policing work of sorts (which allowed the Northmen to boast that they had no police at all). The other, builders, maintained all roads in the North and built new ones, attended to the huge fleet of vehicles of the Nightswatch. Sam was part of the third brigade, stewards, and drove a projection booth for three years.

The Northmen never lived in big cities, the villages beyond the Wall rarely had more than twenty houses. There was no point of building cinemas, banks or even schools there. Buses of the Nightswatch crisscrossed the North: yellow school ones, green bank ones, pink grocery store ones and blue projection booth ones. Sam go into his van in Mole's Town and drove around for a month: through Haunted Forest into the mountains, through narrow paths of Frostfangs to Frozen Shore, to settlements of the reindeer herdsmen and  finally through the bridge over the Gorge to Old Gift and New Gift. In each village he put up the screen on the largest wall, fine tuned his camera, gathered the money and asked show-goes to spit into test tubes (if villagers were surprised they didn’t show it — it was not a custom in the North), took out a book and read on.

“Hmm,” Sarella mused. “So you had money from about a thousand tickets on you, didn’t you? If I were in Northmen’s shoes I would have ambushed you on a mountain road and robbed you.”

Sam’s ears turned crimson.

“What? Did that actually happen? What did you do? Don’t tell me: you gave them all the money and begged not to kill you?”

“Yes,” Sam said miserably. “But, you see, there was a girl with me… Gilly… I agreed to give her a ride to Fist of the First Men…”

Sarella suddenly wasn’t finding it very funny.

“You gave them the girl, didn’t you?”

“No, I… I had a gun in my glove compartment… I fired a warning shot… and accidentally killed their leader.”

Sarella thought angrily that Sam Tarly beat her in terms of worldly achievements too. She never had a gun in the glove compartment of her car, never tried jerked venison, never transported movies in a dog sledge ( _Poor dogs, to move such a fat slob!_ , she said vengefully) and never shot a single robber.

Her only consolation was that Sam obviously acknowledged her superiority. He was absolutely sure that Sarella was smarter, braver, stronger and that she had more experience than a hundred-year-old Aemon Targaryen. It was pleasant, but somehow shameful too.

Sometimes she suspected that Sam was in love with her, but always chased the idea away: Sam Tarly should gemmate, any other means of his procreation was an insult to humankind.They weren’t even friends. Any of Sarella’s Dornish girlfriends would not have tolerated a small part of tortures that Sarella furnished meek Sam with every day, Sarella wound not have allowed any of them to treat her so too.

The truth was befittingly revealed in the dissecting room. While Sam, panting and sweating, was examining clinical signs of cirrhosis on a liver of an alcoholic, one pranker tried to stuff pancreas down his shirt. He only tried because Sarella tenderly promised to crush prankster’s Adam’s apple. No one was allowed to abuse her property.

The very air of the Seven Kingdoms must have been toxic if the first thing a free-spirited Dornishwoman did after arrival was take up a slave.


	5. Jaime

“On vacation?” customs officer in the airport asked.

“No, home,” Jaime answered and smiled smugly almost against his will.

He didn’t have a home since he was nine when Mother died. Their large house in Lannisport — the house where one could slide down banisters, throw lion’s coat from the Trophy Room over oneself and roar, play hide-and-seek with Cercei, drive nanny mad, jump on the bed and quietly creep into Father’s study — that house died with Mother. Father despised all open displays of grief, but after Mother’s death the house on the High Str. turned into a luxurious mausoleum, where everything projected the air of respectful and restrained melancholy. If he were not parted from Cercei Jaime would have been overjoyed to go to the military school. It was better to live in barracks than in a grave. Tyrion grew up in a three-storey monument on top of the grave of the woman he killed in childbirth. Maybe because of it he grew up into a dwarf — the walls themselves suffocated him. Only Father was happy, working in this monument to grief. That is, he experienced that joyless satisfaction that replaced happiness in him after his wife’s death. During Father’s funeral when the casket was placed into the family grave, where Joanna Lannister had been resting the last thirty years, Jaime said barely audibly, “I returned to the cell, prepared for me.” Cercei slapped him for that.

Since the age of nine Cercei was his home. Not barracks in the military school, Crakehall, New Ghis, a tent in the desert or the townhouse in the King’s Landing, but any piece of land where Cercei stood. It was even easier since Cercei instantly marked any space and made it hers as any cat (“Lioness,” she corrected regally). Home was the place that smelt of Cercei’s perfume, _The Tears of Lys_ ; where a silk scarf was draped over a chair; where a ring or a bracelet was lying on a table (When Cercei saw Jaime she involuntarily took something off, even in a crowd. He knew about it and loved this quirk.); where he heard her soft murmuring voice. Home was Cercei — his sister, his lover, his life.

Everything changed since then. Cercei smelt of cigarettes, whiskey and heavy perfume, _The Evening in Volantis_ , that she used in attempts to overwhelm the smell of cigarettes and whiskey. After that episode with a paparazzi she always wrapped shawls, scarves or plaids over her shoulders. Her voice could cut glass now. Jaime didn’t feel at home in her presence anymore.

Now his home was Brienne. Not a rented apartment in Newtown, that looked like a lived-in barrack, but Brienne herself — her smell, her voice, her laughter.

He went to the third floor, patted his pockets with his left hand for keys, gave up and rang the bell. Brienne opened the door and smiled. She smiled like a hooligan from old comic books — from ear to ear, all crooked teeth and two of those missing (Vargo Hoat broke the upper one, Rorge knocked the lower one out). Words could not express how much Jaime loved this smile.

Brienne hugged him. Jaime managed to stand upright because he braced for impact beforehand. Once he seethed that Brienne, a sulky ugly girl in a uniform, was bigger and stronger than him. Now he liked it. Brienne could open the tightest jar, move a chiffonier, carry twenty bottles of beer on a backpack, take a towel off the highest shelf and fight back delinquents in a dark alley. She didn’t need a protector or a porter, one could live with her _sans_ a right hand.

“I’ve missed you!” she said happily. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes. Let’s order beef _a la Yin_ and noodles, I’ve been learning to use chopsticks for two weeks.”

Brienne laughed.

“It’s such a useful skill! But we have pasta with sardines, a cheese and spinach pie, and some leftover chicken. Let me see.”

Jaime stared at her in amazement. Brienne made the bed without a single crease and mopped the floor so cleanly one could eat off it, but she couldn’t cook anything more complicated than boiled eggs.

“Did you sign up for cooking classes while I was gone?”

Brienne took a container with pasta, large piece of pie and a chicken leg quarter out of the refrigerator.

“While you were gone I got drunk two times, passed a test in Valyrian, signed up for an optional course on women’s rights, but I’ll never cook, deal with it. Hot Pie cooked this, I invited Beric’s boys over. Thoros cleaned all the dishes in the morning, can you imagine? What do you want, pasta or chicken?”

“What did you sign up to?” he asked.

“An optional course on women’s rights.”

Jaime slammed his artificial hand into the wall.

“Are you mad?” Brienne asked curiously.

“Are you all conspiring against me with these women’s rights?! Cercei lectured me on that topic in the King’s Landing, and now you too?”

Jaime groaned. Angry Brienne became very meek, patient and curt. Then her patience ran out, and the offending party had to be spooned off the floor. She’s never hit Jaime since he lost his hand, but four chairs, shattered to pieces, had to be thrown away and replaced at their expanse.

“I’m sorry,” he whined. “I’m a jerk, and I want to eat, I can’t think straight when hungry, you know that. Yes, pasta is fine.”

“You are a jerk,” Brienne agreed and dumped pasta onto a pan. “It’s an optional course of the law school, the Domestic Relations Code plus some stuff from the Criminal Code plus parts on business law — inheritance, marriage contracts, budgeting in a family… If I get insolent enough and become a lawyer then women will ask for my advice five times more often than men. So I have to get ready. If I become a police officer as I wanted this this course lasts two years, there will be more psychology, all sorts of statistic data on family abuse — all the information a policeman needs.”

Even reheated pasta was heavenly.

“It’s decided then,” Jaime said when his plate was empty. “Tomorrow I’ll grab Hot Pie, take him to Dorne, and we’ll marry there. To hell with prejudice when there’s this pasta.”

“Marriages in Dorne are permitted only among citizens. In order to get citizenship one must live there at least five years and buy some property,” Brienne corrected him without batting an eye. “You’ll have to go to the Basilisk Isles, but be warned: they don’t have bilateral treaty with the Seven Kingdoms so marriages registered there have no force and effect within the empire. Do you want pie?”

“Yes. I always wanted to die of gluttony.”

After the dinner they went to bedroom and crashed on the bed.

“The Imperial Army misused Hot Pie’s resources all these years,” Jaime muttered sleepily. “He should have been a special unit operative in the enemy army. One dinner of his — and combat efficiency falls to zero. No eagle spirit, only pure satisfaction with life. Come and get them with your bare hands.”

“It’s a splendid idea,” Brienne answered just as sleepily. “I will definitely come and get it. With my bare hands. In half an hour or so, alright?”

Brienne was full of virtues, but Jaime loved one of them most of all — she always kept her word and did what she promised.

They lingered in bed till evening, then ordered beef _a la Yin_ and noodles (it didn’t compare with Hot Pie’s stuff, though). Jaime showed off his skills with chopsticks and dropped meat on the sheets only two times.

“So what happened in the King’s Landing?” Brienne asked, when beef and noodles were gone.

Jaime made an annoyed face.

“Same old. Cercei so brilliantly managed her stock shares that now she doesn’t have the golden share. Now every time the boardroom votes the way she doesn’t like she calls me and demands that I persuade Tyrion and Uncle Kevan who hate her.”

“But they do dislike her.”

“Of course. She harassed Tyrion since he was born and slept with Uncle Kevan’s sixteen-year-old son. She would have been imprisoned during the previous reign.”

Brienne rolled her eyes.

“If every time I heard that phrase I received a dragon… For your information, age of consent was fifteen during the previous reign.”

Jaime waited for the other shoe to drop. _Incest was outlawed, though._ It didn’t. When Brienne was angry she hammered you in the jaw, not prickled you with pins.

“Alright, she wouldn’t have been imprisoned. What does it matter? That’s not the point, the point is now Cercei discovered women’s rights, and she reads differents books. In short, Father didn’t appreciate her, Robert abused her, I always stole the show from her, and now Tyrion and Uncle Kevan don’t give her a chance to show what she can do in the boardroom. And all because she’s a woman.”

“But it seemed Robert did actually…”

“I wanted to kill Robert even before the wedding, guess who didn’t let me? Father always appreciated everything that could be sold or bought so Cercei was always on his mind. He gained most off her.”

“Jaime…”

“Listen, show me one man who has an easy life. You? Me? Tyrion? Let’s hug and mourn the fact that the world is unfair to us. And the most… She pours it out on me! Me! I spent my life, lived every second for her, I never looked at another woman for thirty years, I swore on the Book of Mother that I’d never marry! And where did it all end?”

“Ah,” Brienne said curtly.

Jaime stared at the wall for several seconds, then cursed — creatively and elaborately like an seasoned army officer.

“We can marry tomorrow. Do you want it? I don’t care about the Book of Mother, Cercei or the rest of the world.”

Brienne shook her head.

“Do you remember you said that you loved me because my word could be trusted? I love the same about you. You swore, and that’s the end of it. The War of the Five Kings is long over, no one is going to drag me naked through the streets for fornication. Wait!”

She jumped off the bed, rummaged through bookshelves, returned with three thick volumes and dropped them onto the bed.

“And you’re asking why I need this course… Let’s see!”

She opened the first one and started frantically leafing through.

“Ha! Look, there’s this wonderful ‘Protection of Privacy Act’, otherwise known as ‘Think Well of Others’. The idea is that if we behave like a married couple then private citizens and organizations should think well of us and believe we are actually married. That’s why we could rent this apartment. If we choose to go to a bank and ask for a family loan then the bank can’t refuse. If one of us gets sick and ends up in a private hospital the other one must be allowed into the ward. But if you’ll end up in jail I won’t be able to visit because prison is a state institution, and the state never thinks well of anyone. I’ll be able to visit you as your lawyer, though.”

“If you don’t decide to become a policeman.”

“So please don’t end up in jail until I make my decision. This is clear, now, give me the other book that’s near your foot.”

She concentrated on the contents for several minutes, absentmindedly kicking Jaime, who was kissing her knee.

“I see. In short, I can inherit your stuff, but only if you expressedly mention me in your will and if not less that half of your estate will go to those who are the first and the second in line to inherit. That is Cercei and Tyrion.”

“I’ll leave everything to Tyrion, he’ll share with you.”

“Great. If we’ll have children then I won’t get aid to single mothers because it’s paid only to those who were married.”

“Is that so? What a dirty trick.”

“Isn’t it? You can officially acknowledge them, then they’ll be able to succeed you in absence of legitimate children, but they’ll still have the last name Tarth, not Lannister. And you won’t be elected to the General Council.”

Jaime finally released her knee.

“What the fuck is that about?”

“Didn’t you know that? _The following parties can not be elected to the General Council: notorious for their immoral conduct, that is convicted of offences against person, property or the Crown, parents of illegitimate children, perverts and drunkards_.”

Brienne put the book on the bed.

“You know what? It’s a good thing that you won’t marry me. Because I won’t be a policeman or a lawyer, I’ll be a politician. And I’ll change these stupid unfair laws. I’ll show them perverts!”


	6. Sandor

A ferry to the Arbor was full of couples and Ibbenese tourists. For the umptieth time Sandor felt that he was occupying someone else’s place. As if Sansa was assembling a puzzle, containing a perfect couple. Everything was in place: the sea, the sun, the Arbor, Sansa herself in a light-colored silk dress with birds of paradise print. Only the perfect boyfriend was missing, and Sandor didn’t fit in his shoes.

He endured a dinner at _White Harbor_ because he was anticipating a brawl with the police the whole evening. He could endure a lot of things if he knew a decent fight lay ahead. He endured the Hightower Gallery, all forty five halls of magnificent art: _Appearance of the Seven in Front of Hugor of the Hill, The Coronation of Aegon the Conqueror in the Starry Sept, The Father on the Throne, The Mother in a Crown, The Maid Surrounded by Virgins in White Dresses, Daenerys Targaryen Surrounded by the Seven, Appearance of the Seven in Front of Hugor of the Hill, Pleasurable Gaieties of Knights and Ladies, The Family of Lord Hightower, A View from the White Tower, Still Life with Oysters and Grapes, Appearance of the Seven in Front of Hugor of the Hill, Lady Hightower in a Scarlet Dress, Flowering Fields of Hightower, Still Life with a Rose and a Skull, The Foundation of the King’s Landing, Appearance of the Seven in Front of Hugor of the Hill, The Nude with a Fan, The Nude with a Mirror, The Nude Lady Hightower, Still Life with Outlandish Fruit, The King of the Summer Isles, The Conquest of Sotoros, Appearance of the Seven in Front of Hugor of the Hill, Lady Hightower in a Dothraki Dress, Still Life with Cows, The White Tower in Moonlight, Aegon the Conqueror and His Sisters, A Conversation of a Knight and a Lady before a Tourney, Still Life with a Pipe, Appearance of the Seven in Front of Hugor of the Hill, The Arbor at Dawn, The Arbor at Sunset, The Arbor. An Impression,  A Girl Selling Oysters, A Naked Harlot, Lady Hightower with Children, The Nude on the Grass, Impression #7, Fantasy #3, Lady Hightower as a Blue Smudge._ Fortunately, the Hightowers ran out of money after that.

Now he had to endure an entire day at the Arbor: an excursion to Ryamsport, a visit to a winery, a picnic at the Mermaid's Palace and a return trip under the stars. This couldn’t end well.

Sandor didn’t know what other couples talked about during the ferry ride. Sansa Stark told him the history of the Redwyne family since the legendary times when Meryn III Gardener integrated the Arbor into the Reach. She told him about Lady Olenna Tyrell, nee Redwyne; the Arbor’s defence against the Iron ships, an epidemic of grape phylloxera, revolution of shipbuilding, the first voyage around the world that started from Starfish Harbor. In an hour Sandor was ready to pass an exam on the Medieval History and drown himself. Not necessarily in that order.

“Are you going to write a PhD on the Redwynes?” he asked. It was way better than _Once we entered one bar in Meereen_ — his usual contribution to a conversation with girls.

“No, I want to write about the Tyrells during the War of the Five Kings. Margaery promised me a free pass into their family archive. I wrote a term thesis on economic history of the Reach. The Redwynes were the first who stopped depending entirely on agriculture and trade and started developing manufacturing.”

“I see. It must be interesting.”

“No,” Sansa said unexpectedly. “I’m glad that now I know a bit more about economics, but I don’t really care who and how earned money in wine trade or what significance gaff-sail had for development of seafaring. I want to know who people were in love with, whom they hated and wanted to get even with. I want to know what sort of dress Lady Olenna wore on her wedding, that sort of thing.”

 _I wish I were so lucky, zir naquis,_ Sandor thought.

On the pier the guide counted the heads, waved his striped green-and-yellow umbrella, told a unfunny joke and promised that in two hours they’d dine in that restaurant with a sea terrace over there. Sansa listened to him with naive attention like a diligent schoolgirl. Sandor thought about it for a moment, then took her by the elbow and firmly lead her away from the crowd.

“We’ll go shopping,” he explained to the guide. “We’ll be back before dinner.”

“Shopping for what?” Sansa asked in alarm when they turned around the corner.

“For anything. Tell me in all honesty, _zir naquis,_ how many times have you been to Ryamsport?”

“Four times,” she mumbled, staring at his shoestrings.

“And every time the route was the same, wasn’t it? The lighthouse, the strand, the castle, the sept and the dinner on the terrace?”

Sansa nodded.

“So let’s go shopping. If we see something of historical significance you’ll tell me what it is and when it was built.”

It was a quite rash offer. Something of historical significance was everywhere in Ryamsport. Sansa could tell the age of every house in the town. Instead of shopping they visited the archeological museum where they spent three hours. It was cool and empty. At the end od the visit Sandor learned to spot stylized grape leaves and grapes  — traditional ornament of the Arbor.

It looked more or less like a date, abeit an unsuccessful one, before the dinner. After such dates female leads in movies usually said, _It’s not about you, it’s about me_ and met the male lead the next day. When they returned to the restaurant Sandor again felt that he was occupying someone else’s shoes. Someone else should have ordered a salad with shrimps and a dish of mussels, chosen white wine. And when the waiter would have brought the bottle someone else should have tasted the wine and nodded in approval. Sandor asked to bring him surmullet and alcohol-free beer and sucked the bones for the next thirty minutes without any pleasure since the whole restaurant tried very hard not to stare at him. Someone else should have walked with Sansa between huge barrels, listened to the tale of how after the conquest of Sotoros sweet Arbor wine, that spend up to six months at sea, turned into the famous liquid gold. Someone else, a young blond man dressed in impeccable white trousers, should have boarded the boat to the Mermaid’s Palace with Sansa. This whole day, the sea, the sun, a picnic basket, Arbor gold, scarlet sunset over the island were created for someone else — someone young, rich and careless.

When they returned to the ferry the other couples were already kissing. Sansa sat on the bench and admired the sunset through the sunglasses. A couple of times Sandor thought she was crying.

The ferry reached the port. Sansa rose, and Sandor finally saw for the first time that day: not a picture-perfect lady, the personification of _la dolce vita_ where he didn’t belong, but a girl whose feet hurt.

“Did you blister your heel?”

Sansa shook her head.

“Don’t lie to me, _zir naquis.”_

“Yes… A little.”

“When?”

“Back at the museum.”

“At the museum? That was before the dinner, we walked around the Mermaid’s Palace three times after that. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Hey, lovebirds, the ferry is leaving!” a sailor shouted.

Sandor silently hoisted Sansa over his shoulder and walked down the gangway. She was so stunned she didn’t even protest.

He sat her down on a bench on the quay, crouched in front of her and took off her leather sandals, covered in blood.

“Hey, little bird. If a new recruit pulled such a stunt in the boot camp I would have broken his legs. Oh, stop crying for gods’ sakes!”

The warning came too late, though: Sansa was wailing, sobbing and hiccuping like a five-year-old.

Sandor waited for her to calm down a bit, handed her his handkerchief, tactfully turned away while she was blowing her nose, swept her up and carried her to the dormitories. He would have happily forgotten the damned sandals under the bench, but Sansa didn’t and tried to stuff them into her tiny clutch until Sandor took them away and stuffed them in his pockets. He stopped near a street fountain on the way where Sansa washed her face and splashed her silk dress.

It was a pity the road from the port to the dormitories was so short, Sandor would have gladly walked all the way to Newtown or Honeyholt. It would have been a perfect date: a four-hour walk, feeling Sansa’s hair touch his cheek, her chest pressed to his, knowing that her feet were bare under that skirt. There would have been the blessed silence.

He put her down at the gates of the dormitories, gave the sandals back and said awkwardly, “Well, good night.”

 _“Shekh ma shieraki anni,”_ Sansa answered.

Sandor didn’t understand how they ended up kissing — awkwardly and hungrily as if both were thirteen. Sansa was still clutching stupid sandals in her hands, its one heel pressed painfully into the back of his neck while the other bit into his shoulder blade, but it didn’t matter. They broke the kiss only when an unfamiliar voice said, “You wouldn’t get anywhere till you’re horizontal!” They did so not because they were embarrassed, but because Sandor snapped out of habit, “Do you want to bet on it?”

Sansa laughed. Her eyes were round like two copper coins, but totally unafraid.

“Farewell to my reputation. My place or yours?”

“I have three neighbors, _zir naquis.”_

“My place, then. The fourth floor, turn right and right again. Ouch, I can’t walk.”

On the second floor she pulled off his shirt, on the third he pulled down her panties and estimated the height of window sills because he wasn’t sure they’d make it to the room itself. They did, though, and even managed to get inside and fall onto the bed.

 

* * *

 

They were laying motionless for a while, then Sansa said, “Ouch,” and rubbed her leg. Sandor didn’t take his pants off and scratched her skin.

“We’re so stupid,” he said in a content voice. “And we fucked without a condom.”

Sansa kissed his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, I’m on the pill.”

“So what? How do you know where and with whom I was yesterday?”

Sansa carefully scratched his back.

“Where were you yesterday?”

“In the shower in the company of my right hand, but you didn’t know that. Don’t ever fuck without a condom.”

Sansa laughed.

“You’re an absolutely impossible monster. I’ll introduce you to Arya, you’ll probably like each other. Oh gods, my dress! Do you have… it?”

“What?”

“That thing you just said about.”

“No, but I can borrow some.”

“Then…”

“But I won’t go until you say the word condom out loud, otherwise I’d feel like a pedophile.”

Sansa balked for about five minutes, blushing deeper with every second, finally blurted out “Condom!” and threw a pillow at Sandor. Until now all women he bedded could say ‘Fifty’, ‘Let your sister work for fifteen’ and ‘No condom — no fucking’ in three languages.

He went to the second floor, picking up their discarded clothing on the way. Lem opened the door.

“Do you have condoms?” Sandor asked casually in lieu of greeting.

“Let’s assume I do.”

“Let me borrow some till tomorrow.”

Lem looked him up and down.

“She’s gonna bite your head off.”

“I’ll bite yours off first. Are you going to give it to me or not?”

Lem disappeared into the room and returned with a purple box.

“Here. Go on, don’t bring shame on the Guards.”

While he was gone Sansa managed to make the bed and change into a white lacy slip. When Sandor saw it his bubbling self-satisfaction leaked out of him like milk out of torn carton.

“Why me?” he asked helplessly.

Sansa stared at him in surprise.

“Why what?”

“Why I’m here now, with you.”

“Because I want it. And since we’re on the topic, why me?”

“That’s a stupid question. Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”

“Because I’m pretty, isn’t it?”

“You’re not just pretty, you’re…” Sandor faltered, trying to find words. “I came to the Citadel right out of the hospital. It smelt of medicines, and all nurses were dressed in white and looked ugly as my life, and here you are. In a blue dress without sleeves. I look at you and think, _Well, I didn’t spent fifteen year in the Bay eating sand for nothing, now I’ll introduce myself to a girl._ Then you saw me — and you were scared.”

Sansa blushed  a little.

“I remember. I must have thought I was a silly girl.”

“No, _zir naquis,_ I remembered who I was, who all of us were. I killed for fifteen years in the Bay because I can’t do anything else and I love it apparently. Everyone who is discharged from the active duty are murderers. We should be in jail, serving life sentences, not studying in the Citadel. We have nothing to talk about with normal people, and a girl like you… You’ve probably never heard a rude word spoken to you.”

Sansa stepped closer to him and carefully butted his shoulder with her head.

“That’s the reason it’s you. Because you like me.”

“Stop fooling around, _zir naquis,_ the whole Citadel, apart from the blind ones and the gays, like you.”

Sansa shook her head.

“No. I know they want me, but they don’t like me. Joffrey and Harry — they probably don’t like anyone in the whole world, Baelish likes my mother. I know Tyrion even loved me, though, but he still didn’t like me. He thought that if he explained why I should love him I’d understand, but I didn’t, and he grew angry, but tried not to show it. I still noticed, though…”

 _“Jalan atthirari anni,”_ Sandor said hoarsely. For some reason he could say it in Dothraki, but not in his native language.


	7. Gendry

The sun was already up at 5 a.m., but it wasn’t too hot yet. It was cool and empty outside, only a tiny figure was visible on the other side of the stadium. Gendry yawned, stretched his shoulders, jumped and squated a couple of times to make blood run faster. When Arya came closer he started jogging.

During the last several months he saw different types of runners. Huge muscular sprinters burst into their hundred yards with such force that it looked like they’d trample anyone who happened to be in the way. Lean middle-distance runners started floating above the run track like swans after half a mile. Arya ran like a small wind-up train — chooga-chooga-chooga — till the wind up ends. Gendry never saw her wind-up end.

When in the boot camp they had to run three-mile force marches Sergeant said mockingly, “You’ll thank me later.” Gendry could never guess that training that he found useless during his three years in the army would prove to be advantageous in the Citadel. He would have never managed to stay close to her mile after mile without that gruelling training. He never managed to run the whole distance, though. Three attempts to run in the evening ended up with him puking onto the track. Now every evening he did push ups, planks, abdominal crunches — without his shirt so Arya could appreciate well-defined pectoral muscles as well as abs.

Someone (Lem, probably) left a glossy magazine on his bedside table, it was open on an article _The Most Eligible Bachelorettes of the Seven Kingdoms._ Sansa and Arya Stark were featured as numbers 6 and 7 after the three princesses, Wynafryd Manderly and Margaery Tyrell, but before Myrcella Baratheon and Myranda Royce. All girls on the list, from the princesses to twenty daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of the hotel king Frey, were dressed in evening gowns and looked into the camera with the identical demure smiles as if one of the most eligible bachelors of the Seven Kingdoms stood behind photographer. All, except two. The picture signed _Arya Stark Wins the Wolfswood Marathon_ showed Arya, dressed in a t-shirt with #28 on it, grinning into the camera. Below her was another mad girl in a sailor’s shirt and wide pants. The picture was signed _Asha Greyjoy Aboard Her Own Yacht, The Black Wind._

“So what?” Hot Pie reasoned. “Her sister is dating Clegane.”

As a matter of fact, Gendry often forgot that Arya had something to do with the _North Star_ service stations and that her father held a title. Truly rich ladies like Sansa Stark and Margaery Tyrell wore grey shirts to classes, then they changed to flowery dresses, went to dinner to _White Tower_ or to the bridge, drank coffee in the Guildhalls, always smiled amiably and studies girly stuff like PR or History. To date a real lady one had to have a platinum credit card or balls of steel.To date Arya, though…

To tell the truth, Gendry wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to date her. It was fun to be friends with her — even better than with Hot Pie or Lommy. If they tried to order him around like she did he would have punched them in the face, but he took exception to Arya. She was small, skinny and had no tits — unlike other girls who gathered in the evening to see Gendry exercise. Lommy said that any sane person would have picked one for himself and a couple more for his mates and stopped goofing around.

Gendry stopped, rested his hands on his knees and concentrated on breathing. Arya ran on without even turning her head.

When she returned Gendry already came to his senses a bit, drank some water and poured the rest on his head.

“You’re tough,” she said approvingly. “You should have a heart the size of a calf to run long distances with your muscle bulk. Erm… Can I ask you a personal question?”

Gendry’s heart of a calf beat faster.

“Ask away.”

“Yesterday I barged into some special course in law, their Professor said that traditional bastards’ names are now given only to foundlings. Snow, Rivers… Waters…”

Gendry sighed.

“Yes. Mom abandoned me in the hospital. The orphanage was fine, none of beating and starvation that was common earlier… It really was. Maybe it was worse than living in a family, but kids who were removed from families told us about such horrors…”

Arya nodded.

“I see. When I was little Sansa told me that I was adopted.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, she’s older, and when our younger brother was born she told me in strict confidence that before I was born Mom didn’t have a huge belly or anything, I was just brought from the hospital; that I’m not natural daughter of my parents, but adopted — like Jon, while Robb and Sansa are.”

“Wow,” Gendry said. He wanted to say _Cool!_ Well, it wasn’t cool, of course, but Arya wasn’t a lady, she was a normal girl.

“Yes. I went to Jon straight away to tell him that we were probably related and when we’d grow up we’d find our birth parents. Oh, how he laughed.”

“What a stupid fool.”

“You’re stupid. I was nine when I believed that nonsense.”

“Then you weren’t adopted, were you?”

“Of course not! Sansa made it up because that’s the way she is. And Mom always asks me why we are on bad terms with each other! Do you know what the funniest thing is? Jon is an illegitimate child of Dad’s sister, but it was improper at that time to admit that a unmarried girl from a decent family had a child so Dad told everyone that Jon was a foundling. And we look very much alike because we resemble Dad!”

Something changed after that: she talked of her life in Winterfell at every convenient and inconvenient opportunity. It seemed the Starks lived like a family with six kids and lots of dogs, not like millionaires from movies. Arya remembered long walks and snowball fights, not social events and balls. The only marker of wealth in her stories was mentions of ‘my room’ — Gendry didn’t realize right away that each Stark kid had a room of their own. When he did he was astonished: he moved from orphanage bedroom for four directly to barracks and to a dormitory room for four. He never had a chance to sleep alone in his own bedroom. Later it turned own that Arya had two rooms: ‘a bedroom’ and ‘a not bedroom’. Then Gendry finally realized that millionaires were different from other people.

“What did you do in two rooms at once?” he asked curiously.

“I lived there! And did my homework! What else is there to do?” Arya snapped.

Gendry has been doing his homework on bedside table since the age of seven, so this explanation didn’t help him any. When it turned out that ‘the wardrobe’ wasn’t just a box, it was a separate room for storing clothes, Gendry wasn’t even surprised. Gendry firmly knew that millionaires needed more of everything, even if their wardrobe consisted of twenty t-shirts and three pants like Arya’s.

The Starks also had servants. It wasn’t just a nanny or a cleaning lady who came twice a week, but real servants. When he passed that information to his mates Hot Pie was surprised while Lommy said, “What were you expecting?” Lem didn’t say anything, but in the morning Gendry found an indecent picture with a maid, dressed in  headdress, a small apron and nothing else, on his bedside table.

The most astonishing thing was Arya mentioned servants and special room for clothing in passing, she didn’t think about it. When she said, _Robb and Theon waited for Jon at the lake,_ Theon could be Robb’s friend, Arya’s younger brother (Gendry still got them mixed up sometimes), the butler or another husky puppy. When she said, _I shot an arrow from the middle of the courtyard and hit the target_ she wasn’t boasting about the size of Winterfell, but about her archery skills. When she said she threw an orange at Sansa she didn’t mean to show Gendry that fruit were always freely available back home. Gendry was stupid enough to notice all that, though. And he realize what sort of fool he was only when Arya was telling a story of how Bran and she went into the woods and got lost, and there was a helicopter search and remarked, “It wasn’t our helicopter, it was Night Watch’s. We don’t have one.”

The same day Gendry found Clegane and asked, “Do you know that your girlfriend has a separate room for keeping clothes back home?”

Clegane looked at him as if he were a halfwit.

“My girlfriend has a safe deposit box where she keeps her diamond tiara. Because what if a member of the Royal family comes to Oldtown, and all Sansa’s tiaras are back home in Winterfell? It could become embarrassing, you know.”

Gendry opened and closed his mouth a couple of times like fish out of water. He tried to wrap his mind around the idea that Arya probably had a diamond tiara too — maybe even more than one — and couldn’t.

“You’re worrying about all the wrong things,” Clegane said calmly. “If you hurt her I’ll rip your head off and shove it up your ass, I promised Sansa that.”

Gendry hiccuped.

“Who says anything about hurting? We didn’t even go on a single date!”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying: you’re lingering and making the girl nervous. And you’re disgracing the army. Do you think if Sergeant Dondarrion liked some petroleum princess he would beat around the bush and mumble about a room for clothes?”

“Sergeant Dondarrion has a metal plate in his skull,” Gendry remarked for no apparent reason.

“If you keep pulling the wool over your eyes worse things can end up in your skull.”

Gendry remembered who was the reason for Dondarrion’s injury and nodded obediently.

In the evening when Arya entered the stadium Gendry jumped off the horizontals bars, walked up to her and said, “Listen!”

At that point his eloquence waned. Arya stood silent for a while and said, “Yeah.”

“Well… Erm…”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, I thought…”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe… we could… go some place?”

“Yeah,” Arya said, staring at her feet. “To _White Tower._ And then we’ll go to the Hightower Gallery and visit the Arbor I’ve heard the atmosphere is very romantic there.”

Gendry thought he was punched in the face.

“You...” he said. breathing heavily. “I thought you were normal, that you don’t care about money, but you just… Go to your millionaires and kiss them. They’ll take you to _White Tower_ or wherever you want!”

He returned to the dormitories, lied down on the bed and buried himself in assignment on Linear Algebra. Everyone was pretending that nothing happened: Hot Pie was reading a book cheerfully named _The Butchering,_ Lommy was writing cribs for a Chemistry test,  Lem was repeating Valyrian legal terms with such awful accent that if Valyrians could hear him they’d have died again. Finally Gendry was fed up and said darkly, “She wants me to take her to _White Tower.”_

“You could, she’s a light eater,” Lommy commented.

“One girl I study Catering with, Bella, says you’re cute,” Hot Pie added.

“Valyrians are bastards! They are dead, but I have to suffer,” Lem exclaimed.

Thus the conversation about hurt feelings was over.

Gendry woke up at 4.30 a.m. and was determined not to jog. Just like that. He didn’t sign up for that, after all. And his muscle mass is too big…

“Do you have belly-worms or what?” Lem asked in an indignant whisper. “Why are you wiggling?”

“Hey, why are you not going for a jog?” Lommy asked in a sleepy whisper. “I would have. She’ll see that you don’t care.”

Hot Pie didn’t even wake up. Admittedly, once in the Bay he slept through an artillery attack.

The stadium was empty, only a small figure was sitting cross-legged on the tracks. Arya saw Gendry, stood up and walked closer.

“You know what,” she said angrily. “The next time I listen to Sansa hit me on the head, please.”

“Sansa?” Gendry asked dully.

“What did you think? Who else goes on dates since thirteen? She always makes something up… _Go to White Tower,_ she says! They won’t even let me in there, they have a dress-code!”

Gendry smiled widely.

“You can wear you tiara,” he suggested.

“Cut it out! For your information, I don’t have a tiara. When I was presented at court, I wore Mom’s, one of the heirlooms.”

“When you were…”

Arya hit his arm.

“How long are you going to make fun of me? Yes, I was presented at court, I was in an evening gown and tiara. And when I bowed to the Emperor I stepped on the bloody train and ripped the dress almost in half. That’s why in the article on the hundred brides everyone is pictured during the Imperial reception, and my picture — thank all old gods and new! — is from the Wolfswood marathon! Stop laughing!”

Gendry doubled over and guffawed. Arya kicked his shin.

“You’re so stupid. So, here’s the plan. Today after classes we’ll eat in a fastfood under the bridge. It’s cheap and delicious, you can eat with your hands, and street cats eat the leavings. Tomorrow there’s a game with the Dornishmen, we’ll go to a sports bar to watch it. And the day after tomorrow I’ll take my canoe, and we’ll travel up Honeywine to the Brightwater Keep. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah.”

“Then warm up and let’s run.”


	8. Sam

The dormitories of the Citadel were built at the beginning of 1930s, the last maintenance works were conducted fifteen years ago, after student revolts. Two wings — army one with rooms for four and memorial one for rich students — were added to the building in the process. The key personnel of the Citadel decided to separate ex-soldiers from bright young things after the student revolts.

Three generations of students left their traces on the walls on the Sam’s room. Political mottos, football chants and mysterious spells were scribbled one over  another. _Hear me roar!, What is Dead May Never Die, No Song So Sweet,_ _We Remember, A Taste of Glory, We light the Way_ and disturbing _Our Blades Are Sharp_. Sam thought several times to write _I Am a Sword in the Darkness_ in a corner somewhere, but he was too embarrassed.

Beds in dormitories were so narrow that Sam put three chairs next to his bed on the first day. Now they hosted candy wrappers, empty box of beef _a la Yin,_ pie crumbs, half empty bottle of soda, _The Anatomy of Man, The History of Border Conflicts, The Blazing Chain_ (the seventeenth book of Bronn’s adventures) and partly Sam himself.

Oh, how majestic was Lying Sam! His belly towered over remains of yesterday’s snack in bed. It was so comfortable to lie there under a blanket with a book. He didn’t want to turn into Sam Walking Despondently to Breakfast! He dragged his huge awkward body to the dining room like a walrus, dropped a tray full of food on the table, opened his book and dove into the familiar world where he was nimble, strong and superior to his enemies.

“Hello!” Sarella said.

Sam emerged from the welcoming sea toward scorching sun.

He always thought that he had copious vocabulary and poetic imagination, but when he saw Sarella he always thought about food: chocolate, caramel, peaches, honey, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, sugar and pepper.

“How can you eat this?!” Sarella despised local breakfasts: oatmeal, bread and butter, eggs, bacon and grilled mushrooms. Her tray contained a plate of salad, a piece of goat cheese and an orange. “Did you see the goal in the yesterday’s game? Dorne won!”

Sam shook his head.

“Didn’t you see the game? Amazing. What were you doing yesterday?”

“I was reading.”

Sam didn’t explain that he read half of _The Blazing Chain._

Sarella rolled her eyes and added cheese to the salad.

“Listen, that’s just wrong. You’ll take root someday and grow into your bed like that mythological figure, what’s his name.”

“Three-eyed crow.”

“Whatever. That’s no way to live your life! What are you doing for New Year?”

Sam was going to do what he always did: buy a pie and read. The only difference was that for the first time in three years he didn’t have to monitor the phone. During his service at the Night’s Watch he always volunteered for the holiday shift.

“I didn’t think up anything yet,” he mumbled.

“Thank all the gods that I’m around! You’ll go to the bridge like all normal people do.”

“What bridge?” Sam asked in distress.

“Any bridge! Eat up your oatmeal, we’re late for the Chemistry class.”

It would be an exaggeration to say that Sam worshipped Sarella. The object of worship should stand meekly on a pedestal, while Sarella was always on the move. Sam regarded her as a caveman did a beautiful, menacing and inconceivable force of nature.

Compared to monkish atmosphere of the Night’s Watch, where affairs between brothers were forbidden, and any relationship outside of the organization were not to interfere with one’s duties, the Citadel seemed to be infused with love. Students exchanged notes during classes, whispered sweet nothings to each other in the library, kissed in the dining hall, quarrelled in the dissecting room, then made up in the observatory. At night the ceiling of Sam’s room shook when people in the room above abandoned themselves to passion. Curiously enough, morals were much stricter in other institutions of higher education where co-education was introduced many years earlier. For example, the Northern University had two dormitories — one for males, one for females. Outsiders were not allowed in, so lovesick students climbed up downpipes to visits their girlfriends. The Citadel still didn’t install signs M and F on the doors of shower rooms as if the administration still hoped that co-education would be annulled any day. That’s why shower rooms were considered to be shared. One had to enter them with caution, there was always a chance to encounter a couple who tried to cool their passion under cold water.

Sam was swimming in this sea of love like a huge sad jellyfish. He listened and made notes during classes, read in the library, ate his meals in the dining hall, tried not to faint in the dissecting room, looked into the telescope in the observatory, snacked, read and tried not to listen to sounds from the room above. Inviting a girl on a date equalled to performing several chin-ups to him. It looked simple enough, but not when you weigh 130 kg.

If it were up to him, he would have spent all his years at the Citadel, rolling sadly from the bed to classes and back. Only Sarella lightly, but surely kicked him away from familiar route and took him for a walk through the city, to a concert of a Dornish group or to a bridge to celebrate New Year.

Sam understood the phrase about ‘any bridge’ only on the New Year’s Eve itself when fireworks started cracking after 5 p.m. on both banks of Honeywine. Around 11 p.m. students were gathering on the bridges. When Sam saw the crowd he stopped hesitantly, but Sarella stood behind him, poked a fist into his back and used Sam as a live battering ram in order to get to the parapet.

Sam tried to get comfortable, and someone in high heels immediately stepped on his toes. A pleasant female voice said ‘Excuse me’, an unpleasant male one cursed and said, “You’ll be trampled over, _zir naquis._ Climb up my shoulders”. Sam was poked in the back, then a female foot appeared before his eyes, then he was kicked in the ear. A pleasant female voice said all the excuses again, the unpleasant male one cursed again. The female foot lost the shoe, it ended up in someone’s pocket and poked Sam in his kidney.

“What an excellent idea!” Sarella said approvingly. “Stand still.”

Before Sam could put in a word she climbed up him as if he were a tree, and planted herself on his shoulders.

“Giddyup, my steed! Let’s get closer to the parapet!”

Sam was shaking. He knew anatomy, of course, and had a very decent idea of workings of a human body, but sometimes his own body seemed to be jello or a balloon that could burst from a single needle prick. He gingerly stepped forward, expecting to fall on top of Sarella, but it didn’t happen. He made another step and felt flesh encasing him like armour. He was three times wider than anyone on the bridge, he was holding a girl on his shoulders and wasn’t faltering, he was strong as a battle mammoth. He parted the crowd with his middle and stepped to the parapet, trying not to dwell on what Sarella’s body parts were touching his nape.

Both banks of Honeywine were illuminated with fireworks, dark water reflected multicolored cascades and constantly changed color; the towers of the Citadel for a moment became visible against the night sky, then became neat dark silhouettes again. Sam thought could have missed all of this if not for Sarella. He caressed her ankle gratefully.

Beric’s boys appeared from the Citadel side and started elbowing their way toward the parapet. the crowd parted — reluctantly, but obediently. Everyone knew that Beric was stubborn and had a metal plate in his skull. Arya Stark, the latest recruit of this motley crew, pulled herself up and perched on the parapet.

“I can lift you up on my shoulders,” one of Beric’s boys offered.

“Nah, I see fine from here.”

“Careful, don’t fall down,” an alarmed female voice said from high up.

“If she falls down you’re gonna be jumping after her.”

“What? What do I have to do…”

“It’s none of your business if I fall or not!”

Sarella laughed, then apparently looked down at ammunition that Beric’s boys were busily fishing out of their backpacks and asked, “Are these skyrockets? They look home-made.”

“It’s Lommy’s stuff, he’s our chemical expert,” a chubby young man explained eagerly.

A giant with a girl, perched on his shoulders, stopped bickering with Arya and shouted indignantly, “Are you barking mad?”

“What?”

“You’re going to blow everyone up!”

“I won’t, I made all the calculations!”

“Oh, it makes me feel so much better. Pack it all up or I’ll throw it all into the river!”

“I’d like to see you try!”

“Sandor, I’m falling down!”

“Ha! You’re chicken!”

“Trial of fire awaits you, my son!”

“Get lost, Father! Why aren’t you saying something? Beric lost his brains at Astapor, the rest were born empty-headed, but you must be able to think ahead a bit! There are ladies present!”

“Don’t fret, my son, we’ll tough it out with God’s help!”

“For gods’ sakes! Colonel!”

“Sergeant Dondarrion, abort seeding mines on the bridge!” a voice came from behind. Sam turned his head and saw Brienne Tarth from Law School pushing through the crowd to let Jaime Lannister be closer to the potential fight scene.

Beric Dondarrion waited for Jaime Lannister to get closer and deliberately spit under his feet.

“I’m a civilian now,” he huffed. “The Army gave me a scholarship and kicked me out. Now I don’t have to follow orders from any military man so you, Colonel, can mind your own business. And take Clegane with you.”

Before Jaime Lannister could muster a witty reply Clegane hit Beric in the jaw. The girl on his shoulders shrieked and almost slipped on top of Sam. Brienne Tarth performed a chokehold on the biggest of Beric’s boys and shouted, “Shut up, everyone! I’ll throw off the bridge anyone who doesn’t want to have a peaceful celebration! Hot Pie, take sparklers out my my backpack and hand them out, quick! The clock is about to strike!”

“Wow!” Sarella exclaimed in delight. “Sam, take one! I want one, too! What do we do when the clock strikes?”

“You kiss,” Sansa Stark announced. “Sandor, put me down, I’m scared.”

“And it’s more comfortable to kiss that way,” Sarella whispered into Sam’s ear. “Wait, I’ll get down. Make a wish!”

A bell started striking twelve at the Hightower. It seemed the whole city shuddered and froze.

”One!” the crowd on the bridge yelled.

“Light it up! Light it up!”

Sam fumbled in his pockets for matches.

“Three!”

He fearfully lit a sparkler, holding it as far from himself as possible, and flinched when a plain grey stick produced golden sparks.

“Six!”

“Seven!”

It seemed the crowd on the banks of Honeywine went mad. It looked like  munitions depots were blowing up. On count ten the whole river turned creepy green, then became multicolored again.

“Eleven!”

“Twelve! Happy New Year!”

Sarella stood on her tiptoes and pecked Sam’s lips. It felt like a sting.

”What? Did your wish come true?” she giggled.

Sam contemplated the idea. His ears were buzzing. He thought he was about to fly away like a balloon.

“Not yet,” he said calmly and kissed Sarella back.


	9. Robb

"How can you eat that, it`s sour!"

"It`s not, it`s sweet!"

"Sour!"

"Sweet!" To prove herself right Arya shoved a handful of cranberries into her mouth and chewed it.

"Stop arguing with her, Gendry," Robb said. "Otherwise she`ll devour the whole basket of cranberries. Bog cranberries are, in fact, sour..."

"It`s sweet!"

"...but it is its main advantage. Vitamin C helps one to survive Northern winter."

"You`re just like Mom," Rickon noted disapprovingly.

Robb smacked his head gently.

"By the way, if not for crude oil there would have been no cranberries in these bogs. The Starks have been extracting peet, felling parts of Wolfswood little by little and hunting game here for five hundred years. My great-grandfather felled oaks along the whole White Knife, floated it down the river, sold it and used the money to travel to the capital in order to find himself a wealthy bride. If he didn’t he would have been forced to sell Winterfell."

"Right, I get it," Gendry said in a bored voice. "You were so poor once that you almost sold your castle."

Arya elbowed him. Robb looked at his watch wistfully — it was only a little after noon! He`d have to endure at least three hours of lecturing on social inequality.

Bran pulled himself up on his elbows and started gathering cranberries.

"Everyone in the King's Landing knew that the Starks were broke, that`s why great-grandfather married a Volantene girl. All poor aristocrats married rich Volantene heiresses at that time. And when they arrived to the North great-grandmother took one look at Winterfell and became so angry that she didn't talk to great-grandfather for five years. Even when they were naming children she didn't say a word, but wrote the names on a piece of paper."

"You just made that up!" Arya said indignantly. "How did they have children if they weren't talking to each other?"

Bran shrugged.

"I have no idea, Sansa told me so. Then oil was found on the Stark land, great-grandfather became rich and renovated Winterfell so the Great Keep looks like it's a hundred, not several thousand years old. And the Starks born after oil was found had Northern, not Volantene, names because great-grandparents made up."

Robb bit his lip to stifle a laugh and leaned closer to crimson berries sprawled over moss. For some reason he remembered a cranberries trip four years ago. Rickon was promised that he would come too, but he went down with red sickness at the last moment. Mom said with doubt, "I hope you and Sansa are old enough." She stayed in Winterfell with Father while Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Jon and Theon went to gather cranberries without adult supervision. For starters Sansa decided to prove to everyone that she was old enough and lectured Arya the whole way there. Arya, equally eager to prove that Sansa had no right to order her around, gathered some poisonous flowers. She was instantly covered with rash and smeared her hands with dirt to stop the sting. As soon as Sansa filled up the first basket she started sighing and checking the time. Robb sent her to sit next to bigger baskets, and Theon gallantly offered to keep her company. Arya went to unload her cranberries and shouted, "Robb, they're eating it!"

Robb gritted his teeth, stared at sweaty and red-faced Bran, told him to sit by the baskets and guard Sansa from beasts and cranberries — from Sansa, then not so gently directed Theon back towards the bog. Indistinct muttering drifted over the bog from the basket site.

“She's washing cranberries for Bran,“ Jon explained when he returned.

“It's Sansa, she washes everything, let her be.“

“She washes it with drinking water from the flask. If we'll have to spend a week in these bogs what is she going to drink?“

Theon wailed quietly and started beating his head on the nearest tuft.

When the baskets were full Jon and Arya built a fire. Everyone gathered around it and started grilling canned sausages impaled on sticks. At first Sansa was singing something under her breath, but Theon and Arya criticized her taste in music. Bran yawned, stepped away from the fire, lay down on the discarded jackets and instantly fell asleep. Theon grinned knowingly and took a rollie out of his pocket. Robb frowned displeased: Theon and he had smoked pot before, but they were alone or with their fellow Uni mates, not in front of Jon who was always ready to lecture them on damage caused by drugs and not in front of Sansa who could tell Mom. To his surprise, though, Sansa said, “Let me try!“ The three of them smoked the whole thing under disapproving glares of Jon and Arya. Then while Theon and Sansa were giggling by the fire Robb stepped away, lay down on the springy moss and stared at the stars.

Several days later Bran fell off a tree. Sansa left for Oldtown, Jon enlisted to the Night's Watch, and Robb still refused to think about Theon and what he'd done. A stupid cranberries trip turned out to be the last happy day of his life.

Robb sighed, looked around, noticed that Gendry was discreetly slipping cranberries into Arya's basket while Rickon was as discreetly stealing it and told himself sternly to keep it together.

When they returned to Winterfell a string of half-dead people was crawling out of the crypt.

"That’s rotten!" Arya exclaimed. "It`s half past six, we had a deal that there would be no visitors after five.“

Robb looked closer at the group.

“It's Ser Roderick, he's a slow guide.“

“It's still annoying! Let's go through the backdoor, let them think we`re farmers' children. I hate to be an exhibit item.“

Gendry put the baskets with cranberries down and started massaging his fingers.

“Wait a minute. It must be fun to live in a museum.“

“It's not a museum!“

Robb put his baskets down too and stretched his shoulders with relish.

“As a matter of fact, tourists are not allowed to enter the living floor, they visit only the Great Hall and the crypt. Arya just loves to grumble.“

“Go to hell!“

“Do you know how many castles of this size are still privately owned in the Seven Kingdoms? Three: the Red Keep, Winterfell and Highgarden. And all of them are open to the public. There's no other way, the castles are too expensive to maintain. There are no filmmakers here now, about five years ago there were cameras all over the First Keep.“

Bran laughed.

“Do you remember that time when Sansa was invited to be in the films?“

“Yeah, but it turned out that the guy was not a producer, but a lamp man. The three of us went to have words with him.“

“The three of you?“ Gendry asked perplexed. It seemed he imagined Robb, Bran in a wheelchair and baby Rickon pick a fight.

“Me, Jon and one more person,“ Robb explained reluctantly and picked up the baskets. “Let's go.“

“Theon!“ Arya said suddenly. “Theon-Theon-Theon!“

“Stop it.“

“You stop it! He's not a grumkin from a fairy-tale, you can't summon him just by saying his name out loud. Even it were true it doesn't matter! There`s not a thing in the world that can't be named.“

Robb looked her up and down without a word, pointedly, but still silently sized up her immense personal experience, and dragged the baskets to the back door. His mood was ruined for good. He took cranberries to the kitchen, grabbing a meat pie on the way out, went up to Mom's office and said, “I will have dinner in town today.“

She raised her head from the bills.

“Of course. But be careful.“

“Mom, dinner means dinner. If I'll want to shag I'll let you know.“

She raised a paper-weight a little and shook it emphatically. Robb laughed and closed the door on the way out.

It wasn't a good idea to leave the house today: Robb had spent the previous month at the Shivering Sea where an oil tanker had been wrecked, and in a week he`d have to go to Braavos to a conference on revision of oil development quotas. The place had been chosen three years ago, Braavos was the most neutral place in the world — a city on water that had never made oil, earning money exclusively on tourists. But after the wreck at the Shivering Sea the whole world was curiously waiting whether the oil spill would reach Braavos and put an end to local tourist industry. The bottomline was no one was going to greet conference members with flowers and cheers. And when one knows that in a week one's car will be egged it`s better to stay at home with the family. During these family dinners, though, Robb constantly remembered that Sansa was digging up Sarnor, Jon was holed up in the Castle Black, and Theon was not to be mentioned. So he ran off to town at the first opportunity available.

Gendry was sitting on the stairs and gloomily studying his own shoe laces.

“Did you have a fight with Arya or what?“ Robb asked.

Gendry shrugged.

“Listen, stop pulling a noble savage act. We won't give away Winterfell to poor children, and we won't move beyond the Wall to live in a hut. Arya will simply tire of constantly talking your ears off, and she'll find another boyfriend without hangups.“

“She's already...“

Robb stared at him in outright amazement.

“Are you jealous?“

“Get out of here. And who am I to be jealous of? Your Ser Roderick? Well, all of you just look at me as if you're waiting for the moment when Arya finds another boyfriend without hangups, but with money.“

(The evening Arya and Gendry arrived to Winterfell Father invited Robb to his study and showed him a faded black-and-white picture. At first Robb thought it was Gendry and Jon, then he looked closer and realized it was an old photo from the times Father was attending Crakehall.

“Is this you and... Robert Baratheon?“ he asked dubiously.

Father nodded.

“I suspected that Robert could have illegitimate children, he indulged his every pleasure even when he was betrothed to Lyanna. Suspecting is one thing, though, and knowing...“

Robb wanted to ask, “Are you going to tell him?“, but immediately realized how stupid the idea was. Dear Gendry, your father was my best friend, we loved each other like brothers. He inherited _The Golden Stag_ company, yes, the one with buses and trucks, and he was married to Tywin Lannister`s daughter, yes, the Lannister of _The First Westerlands Bank_. And you grew up in the orphanage because my admirable friend didn't give a damn about you. Let me tell you about the time when we were mountain climbing in the Mountains of the Moon.

“Well,“ he said. “I think your dream is finally coming true, and you will become family with Robert. Fate has weird sense of humour.“)

“We're looking at you like that because you're the first boyfriend Arya brought home, no one can believe that you're actually real. As for the money... You know, several years ago Father arranged for Sansa to marry Joffrey Baratheon while Mom engaged me to Walder Frey's daughter. Well, you must be aware of the way my wedding went, and Sansa hasn't been home for four years. So the idea of arranged marriages isn`t very popular in the family right now. Now's your chance.“

A while ago Winter Town clustered near Winterfell as any other medieval town so in case of enemy attack citizens could hide behind castle walls. Since the industrial revolution, though, it steadily crept southward closer to the White Knife. Now even the district that was referred to as the Old town in every tourist guide was situated twenty minutes away from the castle.

Throughout its history Winter Town had died and came back to life several times. Now it was on the rise: doctors and lawyers now lived in red-brick houses built during Empress Barba's reign that were previously occupied by junkies and unemployed men, abandoned factories were turned into clubs and studios, young men in hand-knit sweaters and young women in huge scarves roamed the streets. Farmers` market worked daily in the main square, there were cranberries, turnips and 'winterpies' with pine nuts and cherries available (the prices on the latter amazed even Robb, the heir to a petroleum empire).

He parked his car in the Wildling district where streets still bore old names: Hornfoots lane, Nightrunners street, Giants street, even though the Free folk haven`t been living in these parts at least three hundred years, and, according to Sansa, giants had never lived in towns.

Robb had told Mom that he wanted to have dinner in town, but when he left the car and looked around he realized he didn't want food, but a drink. Without a glance he passed by several bars where Theon and he often used to spend their time while they were students, and pushed the door of a pub named _Mead-king of Ruddy Hall_ (one needed to avoid pubs with long names around the main square, but not in the Wildling district).

The pub was empty, only a grey-headed homeless man was sitting by the bar. Robb looked carefully, noticed a glint of golden chain around his neck and smirked. A man by the bar was dressed after the latest young adult fashion: torn jeans, torn t-shirt and half a pound of gold so no one even thought that one was actually poor. This `pirate` style had been made popular by a band from the Iron Isles. It was strange that an elderly man was dressed like that and it was stranger still that he was sitting in an empty pub sort of sideways as if trying to take as little space as possible. Probably because of that Robb took him for a homeless man.

The grey-haired man raised his hand to attract attention of the bartender. It turned out several fingers of his hand were missing.

“A refill, please.“

Robb stopped dead in his tracks. He's not a grumkin, he thought dumbfounded. He can't be summoned just by saying his name out loud.

“Theon,“ he said.

Theon — or a grumkin with his voice — turned around. In his mind Robb bet it was a grumkin, real Theon had never looked so frightened or meek. It was even worse than grey hair or missing fingers.

“Take it outside,“ the bartender drawled lazily and put his hand under the bar counter.

Robb slowly took his hands out of his pockets and smiled widely, but it seemed the problem was not with him, but with Theon who looked like he was about to be beaten — Theon whom Robb remembered malicious, cheerful, drunk, high, beaten half to death, but never frightened.

There's not a thing in the world that can't be named, Robb reminded himself.

“We'll sit at the table and talk. Calmly,“ he explained to the bartender, Theon or himself.

It turned out Theon was limping on both legs, Robb had hard time restraining himself from supporting him. Theon of old would have said, “It's difficult to gather your knocked-out teeth with broken fingers, isn't it?“, but Then of old no longer existed, and Robb didn't know how to talk to this... grumkin.

“I wanted to tell you...“ he started.

It was a lie. He didn't want to tell Theon anything, he wanted to beat him, preferably with a steel pipe so he didn't have to touch him.

“I wanted to thank you.“

Grumkin looked even more frightened, and Robb silently cursed him to the seventh hell.

“You're a jerk of the year, of course, if not a century, but I'm still basically grateful to you. Because of you I can stop lying. To Mom, to Father... I almost married Roslin Frey! I'd have lied to her my whole life like a... By the way, she married Uncle Edmure, did you know that?“

“Is she a happy cow now?“ grumkin said suddenly. No, that was Theon.

“You're a bastard,“ Robb said cheerfully. “You could have at least said 'milk fairy'. The old man Frey tried to budge and kick up a fuss. But Uncle Edmure rowed Roslin to the middle of the Trident and returned her home a little pregnant. So they had to marry. Poor Roslin was very happy, but greenish in the face at the wedding, and couldn't eat much.“

“Are you saying you were invited?“

“Well... Let`s say I was there.“

Every time Robb remembered that wedding he felt nauseous as if it were him who had rowed to the middle of the Trident and rode the waves. That day each son, grandson and great-grandson as well as nephew and great-nephew of Walder Frey approached him and called him one or another synonym of ‘fag'. Robb didn`t know some of the phrases and understood their meaning only through context. By the end of the evening he was seeing red. Mom was nearby, though, she held his wrist and smiled to Freys so serenely that some of them delivered their line in an embarrassed whisper, and almost all of them crawled away sideways like crabs.

Theon smirked.

“Oh boy, the spirit of forgiveness descended upon Westeros. Next thing you know I'll be invited to Winterfell.“

“Why not?“

Robb knew well why Theon would never ever be invited to Winterfell, but when he smiled it turned out his teeth were white, very even and obviously dentures. Orthodontists somehow never took root on the Iron Isles, and Theon's own teeth were yellowish and crooked. The clearer Robb pictured circumstances when one could lose fingers, teeth and partly turn into a grumkin the more talkative he became.

Theon — still Theon — looked at him with pity.

“For example, because last time I was in Winterfell I almost burned it to the ground?“

“You didn't do it on purpose,“ Robb objected weakly.

Theon sighed.

“The funniest thing is I don`t know if it was on purpose or not. Have you ever tried acid?“

“No.“

“It`s magic. It expands your senses from here to Sotoros. Then you come around and think: what did I do? Why did I do it? Who am I after that? Then you smoke some pot and stop thinking at all. That's why acid is not addictive. Crystal, on the other hand, is as simple as a penny: you try it once, and the only thing you want afterwards is another fix.“

“Are you saying you sold me out for... a fix?“

“You wound me. For fifty fixes.“

This turn of events had never even occurred to Robb. He could believe that Theon had betrayed him out of envy, jealousy, even as a prank, but doing that for fifty grams of translucent powder? Although one might expect anything from a grumkin.

“You don't understand,“ grumkin said with feeling. It was him again. It was difficult for Theon to become himself, but he turned into a grumkin in a blink of an eye — not only from fear, but apparently from certain keywords too. “You think there's some sort of a choice, that you can decide what to exchange for a fix and what you keep. That’s ok, everyone believes it, that how people get hooked in the first place. I was under the impression that I was lucky since I was shagging the dealer. It turned out it was very convenient for him too — he didn`t have to search for me to extract debts.“

He raised his maimed left hand and pointed with one of the intact fingers of his right hand to the place where the little finger used to be.

“To make it clearer: I wrote the article about your double life for fifty fixes, later I sold my finger for a quarter of one.“

“What do you mean by 'sold'?“ Robb asked dumbfounded.

“Well, Ramsay offered me a deal - a quarter of a fix in exchange for a little finger. He cut off two fingers before that just for fun, so I'd have been a fool to refuse, you know. Anyway, let bygones be bygones. How are you doing? How`s Sansa?“

“Sansa's fine, she's studying, just finished her fourth year,“ Robb said cautiously. If he could risk himself to banish the grumkin who had dragged him through dirt in front of all the Seven Kingdoms and have Theon back he would do it without thinking twice. But to feed Sansa to a grumkin? So that creature could exchange her for translucent powder?

The grumkin nodded meekly, admitting that Robb didn`t trust him and rightly so. When Theon used to be in high spirits any insult from 'terrorist' to 'pedophile' bounced off him (when he used to be in a foul mood one couldn't even ask him to pass some salt), but he exploded like a pipe bomb filled with nails at the slightest hint of mistrust.

“Did you kill him at least?“ Robb asked darkly.

“Who?“

“The... dealer.“

“Indirectly,“ the grumkin answered calmly. “I'm telling you, a person on crystal will do anything for it.“

 _There are two types of trust,_ Robb thought. _Either you hold each other’s hands or each other’s balls. The first alternative is more pleasant, the second one is safer._ He didn't know where he had picked up this piece of wisdom - maybe even from Theon, he used to be prone to philosophical mood back in Uni days.

“Sansa hasn't been home for four years,“ he said. “She's spent her time in the Imperial archives or studied electronic document flow system in the Vale... Now she's digging up Sarnor. She'll be the first archeologist to find a _Lana Fossoway_ boutique there. And true to form she's not alone in Sarnor. We used to think that Mom's ex was the extent of it, it will only get better, but no. Now she has some demoted White Cloak. Do you have any idea what a White Cloak should do in the Bay to be demoted?“

Theon nodded sympathetically.

“I see Sansa and I are members of the same club: 'Step away, nice guy, you're obstructing my view of that bastard'.“

Robb's mouth went dry, and he took a sip of his warm beer.

“And... who's your nice guy?“

“You,“ Theon answered calmly. “You're the nice guy, Robb, and I'm a fool because I haven't even kissed you. You know, fingers and penis is rubbish, everyday Ramsay cut off a piece of me, Theon. I even forgot my own name. And when only a little part of me was left and I had nowhere to hide I realized how much I loved you. It was too late, though. There you go. You've never asked me why I came to Winter Town. I came to tell you that I love you, even if I don't have anything to love you with.“

Robb carefully put his beer away. Only Theon could land such a blow. The last time this happened when he was reading that newspaper article — written, as it turned out, for fifty fixes of crystal — it seemed that a void opened inside him. Robb himself, everything he knew and loved fell into it, then Winterfell was sucked into it. It would have devoured the whole North, all the Seven Kingdoms and the whole world, but Mom came in, slapped his lips, grabbed the newspaper and said sternly, “I don`t want to see this filth in the house again.“ Now Robb felt the same thing only in reverse: something huge, burning and luminous was pushing from the inside out. He earnestly tried to hold it back, but it wouldn`t fit in his chest. Robb realized that he was going to tear to bits, and as ill luck would have it Mom was in Winterfell.

“Just admit that you don`t want to bottom,“ he said in a strange low and husky voice.

Theon stared at him, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but didn't turn into a grumkin. Apparently, Robb accidentally found a magic invocation that broke the spell.

“You... you what?“ he asked frighteningly. “Robb, you don't understand... I shower in the dark so I don't have to see myself. You have no idea what it looks like...“

Robb put his beer away so he didn't accidentally topple it over, leaned over the table and kissed him.

Sansa was the only Stark who learnt everything new from the first try and fell in love from the first sight, the rest including Robb had to work for it for a couple of weeks. The kiss was sloppy and crooked, and Robb knew that it would be difficult, uncomfortable and embarrassing at first, but then it'd work out like riding a bicycle, working in a petroleum company, having sex with men and fixing relationship with Father after Theon's article.

Theon was doing fine from the start, judging by his woozy expression. And it was Theon — grey-haired, maimed, but real. No grumkins.

“I don't get it,“ the bartender said slowly. “Have all the bars closed in the Old Pier?“

The Old Pier of Winter Town has long been a meeting point for lonely men — during the reign of Empress Barba who didn't believe in existence of such improprieties and the reign of the previous emperor when one could get five years of hard labor for sexual deviation. The New Wave black-and-white film made this place famous way beyond the North, and the phrase 'a fisherman from the Old Pier' was now used even by people who`ve never been beyond the Neck — as Robb had learned during Roslin Frey's wedding.

He took a fifty out of his pocket and showed it to the bartender.

“Friend, rent us a room.“

“Do you see a sign _brothel_ on my front door?“

Theon took his own fifty out of his pocket and showed it to the bartender without turning.

“I`m telling you I don't have one. Go across the street — doorkeeper in that house rents a room. It's midday, what are you doing?“

Robb put the money on the table.

“Do you have a phone?“ he asked.

“What?“

“Phone. I need to make a call, I promised.“


	10. Margaery

Margaery have never been in this part of Oldtown. There were no tourist attractions, clubs, famous restaurants or decent shops here. There were playgrounds between neat houses, football fields, a brightly colored school and an apple orchard in the neighborhood nearby. Young women with strollers and elderly ladies in cardigans over flower-patterned dresses walked around.

Sansa was standing by the fence twirling a red leather dog leash in her hands. She looked as if a photographer was hiding behind the nearest corner and making a photoshoot _Best looks of autumn_ — as always. Margaery, dressed from head to toe in _Lana Fossoway_ , instinctively looked down to check if her bag matched her shoes. It was fun to be friends with Sansa, but expensive fun.

Being friends with Sansa was also very simple because Margaery could tell her whatever came to her mind instead of rehearsed lines.

“Where did you get this skirt? Are there any more left?”

Sansa smiled.

“On Skagos five years ago. It was suitable only for day trips to the forest then, but now they're the last word of fashion. I've missed you.”

“And I've missed you,” Margaery replied in all honesty.

She stepped closer to the fence and immediately stepped back: a huge black dog that looked hostile was by Sansa’s side.

“To heel, Boy! Don’t be afraid, he doesn’t bite. Let him smell your hand. She’s a friend, Boy!”

Margaery mentally waved her hand good-bye and let the beast smell it.

“We took him in from a shelter. Sandor says huge black dogs are adopted least of all. I can’t imagine who could’ve abandoned such a darling!”

The dog started wagging its tail enthusiastically — Margaery took another step back.

“People who don’t want to have a pony for a pet, for example,” she suggested.

Sansa made a duck face like a five-year-old asking for ice-cream.

“He’s not that big.”

“Sansa, he’s huge! If he rears onto his hind legs he’ll be taller than you!”

Sansa stared at the dog as if intending to contradict this obvious fact.

“He’s not allowed to jump on me. And he’s very obedient, he doesn’t even strain at the leash when walking. Walk, Boy!”

The dog wagged its tail happily again.

“Do you want to come with us?”

Margaery nodded. In her head she had rehearsed her conversation with Sansa several times, but never thought it’d take place in front of a Terribly Huge Black Dog. Admittedly, it was very Sansa: even in Oldtown, the most feline city in the Seven Kingdoms, she managed to find one remarkable dog or another. And it was impossible to walk with her around the King’s Landing, a city where dog poop was considered to be a part of the city charm: she was constantly petting a stray dog.

“How do you find Dorne?” Sansa asked, and Margaery smiled. It was very Sansa too: ask the question that the other person finds enjoyable to answer.

“Dorne is wonderful. It’s terribly hot, of course, but everything is made to make the heat bearable. There are tents or fabric stretched over shopping streets, streets are paved with marble or tile in the city center, and every establishment offers cold tea for free. The streets are terribly narrow, a car is almost useless, riding a bike or walking is the way. Their cities are really small, though, and almost no one lives there.”

“What do you mean?” Sansa was amazed.

“Exactly what I said. Their petroleum aristocracy and such lives mostly in palaces in the desert. With gardens, fountains and whatever. They visit towns mostly to do shopping: they swoop through the streets, buy stuff for fifty grand and end up in night clubs. What I’m saying is clubs in the King’s Landing where Joffrey took us don’t even compare.”

Sansa pulled the leash of her dog, even though he wasn’t misbehaving. Margaery remembered that Joffrey should never be mentioned in Sansa’s presence, faltered and rambled on.

“They live at night. It’s too hot during the day so everyone is sluggish like flies or just sleeping. After sunset, though, streets are buzzing with conversation. All cafes and restaurants have terraces. And they work till sunrise. You can imagine what opening night looked like. But then… When I opened the flagship store, everything we had was sold in, like, an hour. I kid you not! A doubled-up Rhoynar old lady, dressed in black like they all do, comes in, takes our saddle bag (you know how much they cost) and says, "Pack five of those, for my granddaughters." I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I have,” Sansa said suddenly.

“Mother Above, where?”

“On Skagos when a tanker arrives or when oil-industry workers' shift ends.”

“Mother Above,” Margaery repeated. She had never managed to reconcile Sansa and the concept of petroleum development in her head. In Dorne it was impossible to forget that the main treasure of the land was not olive oil, wine or horses, but crude oil, black blood of the land. Wherever one went in Dorne subtle smell of petroleum always mingled with smell of coffee, tobacco, spices, grilled meat and honey. Sansa always described the North as the land of hunters and lumbermen, though, that’s why it was hard to Margaery to imagine that there were the same derricks in the Dornish Sea, on Skagos and Skane.

“Listen, the most important thing is we’re starting up a new collection and it will be solely mine. I created the concept myself, found designers, chose sketches, persuaded Grandmother, and yesterday we finally signed all the papers.”

Sansa almost made a move to hug her, but stopped at the last moment. The times when they constantly fell into each other’s arms were gone. Margaery knew all too well why.

“A limited collection for Dorne?”

A week ago Grandmother asked her the same question. “Dearest, if Dorne inspired you so much why don’t you make a limited collection that will be actually relevant for the Dornish?” With flourish Margaery handed her a folder with twelve sketches: classic scarves with horses, but the horses were sand steeds.

No one in Dorne would have bought red leather bags, brightly colored scarves and silver jewelry by Tyrell and Co that were available at any Rhoynar market. Margaery couldn’t help herself, though: she had been breathing the air of salty, stony and sandy Dorne so much that she was almost bursting. Her collection should mirror that feeling. It will.

“That too, around New Year. I already came up with a New Year present for you: we have a blue-and-silver scarf, it will be perfect with your hair. But scarves are nothing really, I’ll have a whole collection of accessories distributed to all stores in the Seven Kingdoms. Buy it right away, it’s going to be a bestseller, trust me.”

They reached the apple orchard. Sansa unbuckled the leash, told her monstrous dog, _Walk, Boy!_ The dog dashed to the nearest tree. Small striped apples were already ripe, sweet smothering smell of apples filled the air.

“Careful, don’t slip, there’re many windfall apples,” Sansa warned. “You’ve tanned.”

Margaery touched her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Yes, a little. Grandmother already scolded me that I look like a country girl. Everyone is tanned in Dorne — the sun is very harsh. During the first month there I went yachting. When I returned home and took off the sunglasses I found out that I became a racoon. Anyway, I like it. I want to make tan fashionable now, everyone here is pale as dead mice.”

Sansa smiled.

“Nah, I’ll pass. I prefer to be a pale mouse than a well-cooked crab. Do you remember the way I looked after Sarnor?”

Margaery sighed deeply. The conversation she came to Oldtown for was fast approaching.

“I do. Do you remember that we almost stopped talking to each other after Sarnor?”

Sansa turned to an apple tree, picked an apple and started carefully wiping it with a handkerchief.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.

“You don’t know what?”

“Why you were offended. I tied myself into knots, but couldn’t think of anything. I’m sorry, I know I offended you, but I don’t even remember what I said or did.”

Margaery silently cursed Joffrey Baratheon, Tyrion Lannister, Petyr Baelish, Harry Hardyng and Sandor Clegane to the seventh hell. The she thought again and cursed herself too.

“You didn’t offend me.”

“Margaery…”

“No, really! Come to think of it I offended myself and took offence at myself too. You see, the thing is I fell in love with you during the freshmen year.”

Sansa turned to face her. Margaery deftly grabbed her apple and continued.

“I’ve dated men, and women too, but you were special. I watched the way you darted from one jerk to another and thought that in a little while you’d realize that men were just not your thing, and then I’d explain that they were not the only option. Then you started dating Clegane, and I thought: this is it. I thought you were desperate enough, there was only one tiny step left… Then you returned from Sarnor. I accidentally bumped into both of you at a perfume store. You didn’t even see me, I was standing behind a column and admired you. You were red-faced, dry-haired, but still terribly pretty. Then you dabbled his wrist with cologne and smelled it. At that moment I realized what a fool I was. We used to choose perfumes together too, and you smelled my wrist too, but that was different. It was very different.”

Margaery was stepping out of the closet for the first time in her life and didn’t know what reaction she expected to see: indignation, disgust, tears… Sansa’s face stayed impassive and projected polite friendliness. It meant, of course, that Sansa didn’t understand a thing. She had the same expression during Economy classes.

“But… why didn’t you say anything?”

“Listen, during the previous reign that thing I didn’t tell you about resulted in jail time. During current reign one just dies socially like your brother.”

“That’s not true!”

“What is not true? Read the society column. Everyone discreetly pretends that Robb Stark died right after Edmure Tully’s wedding. I don’t want that to happen to me. This is not Dorne, their list of the most eligible bachelors contains information on said bachelors’ preference in bed — men or women. If tomorrow I decide to wed my girlfriend Highgarden will be in mourning for six months while no one will even bat an eyelash in Sunspear.”

“You have a girlfriend?!”

Margaery laughed.

“No, I plan to pine after you my whole life like knights from your beloved medieval ballads. Of course, I have a girlfriend. The Martell family has such wide variety… Truth to be told, at first I had a crush on Nym, but it’s ok, everyone has a crush on Nym. Now I have Obara. Do you know what she is? She’s a captain of _Seahawks_ , an anti-smuggling unit. She has four scars from bullet wounds — here… and here… I, the flower fairy, am sleeping with a customs officer. On the other hand during the Princess Elia Cup horse races all Martell casually, oh so casually were wearing our scarves with horses. When I opened the flagship store that collection was gone in record time.”

Sansa for some reason took the apple back.

“Do you have her picture?”

Margaery had hard time deciding whether she should take Obara’s picture with her to the Seven Kingdoms and if she should which one it would be. Pictures from yachting trip were out of question — import of pornography was a punishable offence even during the current reign — but even the most mundane photos (Obara at a horse race track, Obara on a bike, Obara in the kitchen, Obara in a hammock) were flooded with such Dornish light, invisible to the naked eye, that Margaery didn’t dare to keep them in her suitcase or bag. Eventually she took only one picture — Obara in her full combat gear. With certain lack of imagination she could be mistaken for a male.

She showed Sansa that picture. Sansa was flabbergasted for a moment, she stared at the apple in her hand, then put it into her skirt pocket and took the photo. Margaery made a mental note to herself to visit Scagos. Not one of her thirty skirts had pockets.

“She looks like Sandor,” Sansa said thoughtfully.

 _Your Sandor has only the right half of his face, and there’s not much to look at,_ Margaery thought indignantly.

“Then I won’t arrange a double date,” she said out loud.

“No way, they’d murder each other,” Sansa replied absentmindedly, staring at the picture. “Our military uniform is prettier, though.”

“Especially White Cloaks’,” Margaery agreed and hugged her.

As if two years when they first didn’t talk to each other, then barely wrote to each other never happened. As if the confession that Margaery has been dreading for the last three months never happened. Sansa entered her embrace as easily as before. Margaery used to know her body like her own so now she immediately noticed that her breasts were larger, she had a bump in her belly and she smelled differently.

“You’re pregnant,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

Sansa nodded self-consciously.

“You can see it, can’t you? I’m nineteen weeks through. That’s why we only arranged a betrothal. I need at least six months to organize a wedding I want, by that time I won’t fit into any dress. Actually we’re already married in the town hall so the baby will be legitimate, but we’ll have a sept wedding in about eighteen months. Will you be my bridesmaid?”

“If I won’t die a social death by that time I will,” Margaery solemnly promised. “Does that mean you’re quitting your academic career?”

“Of course not! I’ll hire a nanny and I plan to finish my maester’s thesis right before the wedding.”

And they turned to topics pleasant and familiar to both of them: places to buy baby shower presents, the color suitable for walls on the nursery, the choice of carpet that would work well with Starks’ heirloom cradle that Jon wanted to bring to Oldtown in a car, the appeal of traditional Rhoynar maternity dress for Sansa.

“Do you have a name?”

“Yes. I’ll name a boy Florian, and a girl — Jonquil.”

Margaery bit her lip and clenched her fists so she wouldn’t laugh. It was so dumb — who names children after characters in a medieval ballad? — and so Sansa it was impossible to say either _So sweet!_ or _Darling, have you gone mad?_ Neither response was needed: Sansa doubled up with laughter.

“You should see you face right now,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Was that your idea?” Margaery asked suspiciously. Sansa never had a sense of humour.

“No, Sandor’s. It’s amazing, though, I’m going to tell everyone about Florian and Jonquil. Actually I haven’t made up my mind yet. Mom says a father should name boys and a mother should name girls. Sandor says that if a father could give birth to boys it would have made more sense.”

She grabbed Margaery’s sleeve, heaved herself up and exclaimed suddenly.

“What? Is it the baby?” Margaery burst out in distress.

Sansa shook her head, took the apple out of her pocket, smiled to it, rubbed it on her skirt and bit into it.

“It’s sour,” she said with pleasure. “This is a Northern apple, people here use them only in pies, and I eat them raw. Last week Sandor gathered a whole bag of them, I’ve already devoured half of it. Now I constantly want sour food. Yesterday I ate a whole lemon — with the skin.”

She finished the apple and deftly threw the core away. Margaery was surprised when she realized she’d never seen Sansa eat apples or any fruit that were not washed, peeled and cut into pieces or throw litter on the ground (even if it was an apple core in the middle of apple orchard).

“And one more thing — but first promise not to tell anyone, it’s a secret.”

“I swear by old gods and new,” Margaery said solemnly. “Well, what is it?”

“I’m writing a novel.”

“What?!”

“A historical novel about the War of the Five Kings. Only it will be true to historical facts, brown hair won’t be called chocolate one, and no one will do anything 'on reflex'. And it will be written from a female point of view. From a point of view of an actual woman of that period, you know, when she was happy to hear about a marriage proposal and didn’t reach for a sword and ran into the woods. And if she does, she will look like Brienne Tarth from the Law school, not like me armed with a sword, but I haven’t decided yet.”

“So it will be a romance novel,” Margaery clarified carefully.

Sansa indignantly opened her eyes wide.

“Why a novel from a male point of view is historical and a novel from a female point of view is romance?!”

Margaery couldn’t answer that. During the year she’d spent with the Martells she had thoroughly embraced equal rights ideas, but until now she still unconsciously thought that these wonderful ideas applied mainly to the Martell women and maybe to her too. Sansa and women's rights didn’t fit together, but apparently Sansa herself thought otherwise.

Margaery didn’t argue about editorial policy since she remembered a more practical obstacle.

“Sweetheart, if you publish a novel — historical, romance or whatever — you can forget about your maester’s degree. The book will be the end of your academic career.”

“I’ll publish under a penname!” Sansa announced triumphantly. “That’s why it’s a secret.”

“I’ll be silent as a grave, I promise. But anyway, do you really want to teach at the Citadel? In this abode of men? They still believe that women’s brain leak out during period!”

Sansa opened her mouth in surprise and blushed. Margaery repeated her last words in her head and realized that a year ago she wouldn’t have uttered a word 'period' in her mind let alone said it out loud. Obviously, Dorne did rub off her.

“Move to Dorne,” she proposed. “There’s a wonderful small university there. You can take your monster there too if you want.”

Sansa smiled.

“My monster is not going anywhere, he’s got the underground.”

“He’s got what?!”

“The underground transport system is going to be built in Oldtown, didn’t you know?”

“He didn’t have enough underground rides when he was little, did he?”

Sansa laughed.

“He’s part of the archeological group. Oldtown is the oldest city in Westeros, do you have any idea what one could find while digging underground tunnels? Ser Barristan already secured a place for the new National museum. We won’t move from here for the next eight years at least. And if the government provides the money for the second underground line we’ll stay even longer.”

“Are you saying that Ser Barristan Selmy made your…”

“...husband…”

“...husband part of the most exciting archeological group in the Seven Kingdoms? You know what, tell me more about your trip to Sarnor.”

“Of course,” Sansa agreed, “but at home. It’s getting dark. Boy! Come here, Boy! We’re going home!”

Margaery turned her head and almost screamed. A huge black monster in a shining necklace was racing toward her and frothing at the mouth. Apples were flying from under its formidable paws.

“We bought him a collar that glows in the dark so people won’t get frightened in the dark,” Sansa explained. “Boy! Come here, you, good doggy! Come here!”


End file.
